A Midwinter's Tale
by PSYchOtiC-teNdencieS
Summary: Man cannot see sprites, but when Jack Frost falls in love with a quirky horseman, Father Winter grants him a chance to be with his beloved and turns him human. If he can win Hiccup's heart by the first sign of spring, the spell remains. But if winter ends and the other boy doesn't feel the same, once more he will be an immortal spirit, never to be seen by human eyes again. hijack
1. The One-Legged Horseman

**A Midwinter's Tale**

**A/n**: This... I don't even know what happened here. This is a weird medieval fairytale that's kind of a deranged mutant hybrid of "Jack Frost" the cartoon, "The Little Mermaid" and "City of Angels." The characters are ridiculously OOC. Some basic elements remain more or less true to the original works, but really, the world of story is super different. Also the very beginning might be a bit confusing because pronouns. :S

So let me warn you... this is going to have period dialogue. Like. Not really ye olde English shit, and it's not going to be super accurate, oh hell no haha. But it's just not going to have a modern American feel. At all... I'm trying to make it as simple as possible while still being passably period (sort of). So the characters will speak pretty differently from the originals... I want to capture as much of their original portrayal as possible, but this is a very different world of story. Also, when they say "yea," in this context it isn't pronounced like "yeah," it's the one that sounds like "yay."

Enjoy!

* * *

-Chapter 1. The one-legged horseman-

* * *

He first fell for the human's smile, and the way laughter leapt from it in short, gentle spurts, as the black stallion nudged its snout against his slender shoulder with an insistent snort.

Then it was his hands, small but coarse from working in the stables, grasping eagerly at the air when he spoke to the animals, running in such fond circles along the horses' thick necks, and tightening steadily round his hammer when he replaced the beasts' shoes.

Next to seize him was the young man's hair when he rode on horseback, flying back from his full, beaming face, like a cascade of whipping flames – almost so bright and red as a blaze when the sun glared against it.

And the freckles, laid out upon his roundish, rose-tinged face like a map of stars made from his skin – he drew constellations from the assembly of russet specks, and tried to number them, but he always lost his count to the young man's hazel-green eyes.

But what kept him coming back to the human, day after evermore-lonesome day, was the story that came in pieces. It came with every secret the equestrian youth entrusted to his tall, unspeaking companions, and with every bare, unhindered sentiment crossing his features – for here in the village stables, he never hid from the wide, forgiving eyes of his closest friends, and he never saw the ghostly blue gaze following him from a realm beyond mortal senses.

The invisible watcher began to build from the many pieces he found, until they made a boy who lived in his father's vast shadow, a soldier made too young in a desperate time, a dreamer who wandered through _maybe_'s like fields, an outcast in a land where might was right, a thinker who tracked logic through fogs of passions, a child's sanguine heart, and a veteran's cool wisdom.

And his story went something like this.

Once there was a boy that other youths took turns knocking down, because his shape was small and his speech was broken. Adults disliked him too, because he stammered childish nonsense and never paid heed longer than a giddy sparrow could sit still. They had a nickname for the unlucky boy, one that even his burly father called him when he returned from questing with the other knights. His Christian name they no longer spoke, and he became known only as Hiccup, God's scrawny little blunder.

One day the King's war reached Hiccup's village, and called away every man and boy old enough to carry a weapon. He might have died a hundred times, were it not for a youth with a soft face, who parried the weapons aimed at the clumsy boy's head, pulled him onward when he couldn't walk, and pushed him back when he couldn't defend.

The foot soldiers ran ahead of the horsemen, always first to fight, and first to die. Only the nobles could claim a horse and fine armor, while the peasant recruits met the foreign enemies with little more than their fists, and whatever scrap of armor or shoddy weapon they could pilfer from the dead. But the fair youth who watched out for Hiccup tore into his opponents with deathly precision and speed. He did not appear much bigger than the other boy, under all his furs and a few mismatching plates of metal, but he possessed the heart and skill of a fighter.

Hiccup had never commanded such possessions. In his enemy's eyes, he found only his own trembling reflection.

There came a day when the foreign forces overtook them. It was a misty dawn, made of gray-shrouded havoc. The boys were separated, and Hiccup just ran, as fast and far as he could, until the screaming died to a distant wail, and he could hear no more than an echo of clanging of steel. But just as he collapsed against a tree to rest, another sound approached – that of clapping hooves.

Suddenly something huge and shrieking erupted out of the thick smog, nearly slamming into the startled boy. A warhorse, riderless, black as night, and decked in enemy colors, reared on its mighty legs and screamed ferociously into the murky air. The boy fell to the ground, gasping up at the beast's madly swerving neck and the rippling mane. Its hooves smashed into the dirt just a hair's breadth from the boy's feet, but just as the boy began to scramble back, the beast suddenly swayed. All at once, its wild wrath died, and the creature dropped heavily to the ground.

Hiccup could have let it be. He could have kept running even farther from the gory mayhem raging in the distance. But curiosity and benevolence together conquered fear, and so he approached the fallen animal.

The stallion breathed, long and slow, eyelids batting wearily. It bore red stripes all along its hide, through the blue and white cloth draped over its back. A small, coarse arrow impaled one of his hind-legs, spilling blood into the grass beneath the lightly twitching hoof. Instead of painted goose feathers, the arrow bore four precise copper vanes at the end of its shaft, a deadly design for armored enemies.

Hiccup knew this arrow.

It was his own make.

The boy had flinching aim, and wielded his bulky crossbow clumsily. But his cleverly crafted arrows flew fast and true, even if they only struck a knee, or a shoulder.

Or a limb.

As he regarded the bloody fruit of his smith-work, illness grew from the hollow of his belly, reaching down to knock at the meeting of bones in his knees, and rising up to clench around his skinny neck. So he sighed out his quivering breath, and knelt beside the massive steed.

Not only could Hiccup smith, he had also learned from the battlefield a few surgeon's tricks. Withdrawing a small knife, he gently held the stirring leg still, and cut through the wood on one side of his arrow. The horse whined and shook when he carefully pulled the weapon out, and he whispered to it without thinking, senseless offers of solace and soft hushes. From his own tunic, he severed a long strip of pale cloth, and secured it thickly round the gushing wound.

Hiccup stayed with the ailing animal all that night, wandering only when the mist cleared in search of the stream he could hear tripping delicately in the final quiet of a decided battle. He gave the beast drink from his replenished waterskin, and moved his hand soothingly against the beautiful mane.

That day, he made a friend like none the uncommon boy had ever hoped to find.

The rest of the story, the watcher only knew in the smallest fragments. He knew the stallion mended, and started to follow the boy with that unparalleled devotion only a creature so childlike, so unaware of mankind's sins, could ever bestow. He knew the boy found his fair brother in arms again, who still fought in the King's name even now. And he knew Hiccup no longer served the King's army, not since somewhere in the scatter of this tale's end, he gave his country all the flesh from his left knee down, a cold metal peg where there was once blood and bone.

The watcher never understood grief the way mortals can. He knew little of the gamut of sensations humans know – only play and delight were his. But for the first time in his boundless existence, he felt drawn to the tumult of humanity, because somehow, out of that wreckage, this one-legged man was made. For the first time, he found a gem in the jagged rock, never before thinking to look. And when he found it, explored the textures of each gleaming side that comprised the beautiful whole – for the first time, he fell in love.

And Jack Frost, the simple winter sprite, who danced around Death's bony clutches, and flitted easily from Pain's searing embrace – he craved what he could barely understand, this gift of change and growth humans knew, the depths of doubt and the peaks of faith, the short life they both cherished and deplored in measures. Above all, he longed to inhabit the world where Hiccup could be found, where his love for a being he could never reach could at last know heat. He would abandon his entire eternal existence, for a single lifetime with this one intricate young man.

* * *

-To be continued-

* * *

**A/n**: You made it through this mush! Well done then. :B

Reviews sustain my being. Please fortify me. Kthnxbai.~


	2. Father Winter's Gift

**A/n**: Welp I'm just gonna warn you there's some pretty whimsical shit ahead. And a semi-OC... kind of supposed to be MIM? Idek. :P

* * *

-Chapter 2: Father Winter's Gift-

* * *

Father Winter lived in a palace on the clouds, rolling with them across the sky, and casting a vast shadow o'er the passing lands and seas below. His children could always find their ever-drifting home, for he wove an enchanted string into their hearts when he made them, and tied the other ends to his own.

Jack was his youngest, sewn together from snow and mist, and seamed with silver frost. Each winter child's center was filled with a different celestial element, such as _hope_, _wonder_, or _dreams_. Into Jack, the ancient maker planted _joy_, carefully picked from lush meadows of _laughter_.

The youthful sprite, no more than three hundred years in age, glided through the cloud kingdom's tall, trim gates with a secret smile on his pale lips. He turned to other weather spirits with a grin and a quick, bright laugh as he sped by, his blue cape flurrying in their disgruntled faces. They whispered and shook their blanched heads at the fledgling sprite. In recent weeks, he was scarcely seen outside the dominion of Mankind.

Tousled locks of silver hair sprang and fell as he dropped from the wind's gentle grasp, and he sprinted upon bare white feet along thick tiles of ice, up the staircase by the west dining hall to the throne-room. But his path met a sudden barrier, and Jack crashed into a firm, warm mass.

"What the—" a husky voice hollered above Jack's head, and a pair of rough hands pushed him back. He stumbled awkwardly for balance on the slick steps, and blinked up at a manlike figure, tall and strapping, with thick black inks streaked across bare bronze skin. "Crikey, Jack! Watch yourself, would yeh?"

Jack just grinned, brushing down creases from his white tunic. "Whoops," he chuckled, and leapt around the disgruntled spirit of spring.

The spring sprites were made from earth and wood, with flower-petal eyes and thick fur about their heads. Aster was broader than most, marked by the dark patterns over his arms and back as an Elder. This was not to say he was old, for he had only a century or so over the youngest winter sprite. His marks spoke to a status earned, not inherited – by being the most cross and uptight sprite there ever was, Jack would say.

Aster squinted suspiciously at the other spirit as he dashed past without a single quip or trick. "What's got you so keyed up?" he asked after him.

Jack swiveled around to face Aster, pausing mid-step. "I'm going to ask him!" he said with breathless delight. "I'm getting my wish today!"

Father Winter granted a single wish to every sprite, even those not made of his frozen hands. Most waited at least a millennium before choosing, though some impatient youths asked for their promised birthright early on. They asked for a new face, thicker limbs, sharper wit, or greater mastery over their weather magic. And once their wish was spent, there was no undoing it.

The spring sprite raised a brow at the jubilant winter sprite.

"Oh? And I suppose you'll be asking to be taller? Or maybe less thick-headed, but then that might actually be useful."

Jack shook his head. "I..." he started, nearly bubbling over with excitement, for once not bothering to tease back Aster back. "I want to be a human!"

The bronze spirit stared, sure at first that it must be another of his jests. But Jack just smiled with such honest glee, and Aster's bewildered glance turned to a scowl.

"You _what_?" he blurted. "_Human_? Are you bloody mad?"

The other sprite rolled his eyes childishly. "What?" he said with an irritated shrug, as though he couldn't imagine a possible downside to his wish.

"You'll break his heart if you ask for that!" Aster exclaimed, stepping up towards the slender young sprite. "And he'll never give it to you. So do yourself and him a favor and don't say a bloody thing about wanting to be human, right?"

The winter sprite frowned, and started to retort, but a full, rumbling voice spoke before he could.

"Is that what you want, Jack?"

Jack turned, and the elderly god himself gazed down at him from the top of the staircase. He was begot of Mother Earth and Father Time, at the dawn of all life. His beard was long and his face creased with incredible age, but his power was deathless.

Father Winter stood far above the sprites' heads, and his hair floated as though carried by a breeze, while his white robes seemed to fall round him like tailored smog. His pale eyes aglow like soft moonbeams, the god beckoned his youngest son closer.

"...Aye," the winter sprite replied quietly, approaching his creator with a deferent tilt of his body towards the ground.

His father shook his great head, smiling sadly.

"You must know I cannot grant you this."

Jack moved forward and opened his mouth to protest, but the god continued.

"What you ask of me," his unearthly voice said lowly, "is to give you death." Father Winter gazed down at his child with fatigue and vague amusement, as if he were a weeping infant. "And I will not."

The winter sprite glowered, running up the last of the steps between them, though Aster tried to stop him.

"You promised anything!" he insisted. "I've thought it through – I have! It's what I want and you said I could have it. You said-"

"What I said," the god cut in sharply, clear eyes sparking with irritated light, "is you may have anything that I can give. But this I cannot give you."

"Yes you can!" Jack shouted. The spring sprite grabbed his arm to ease him away from the god, before he could further dishonor him. But the winter sprite shook him off. "You just _won't_."

Father Winter's entire being darkened, like a storm looming among the clouds. Lightening-like flashes burst in his old eyes, and a mist fell upon the stairwell.

"You know nothing of Man," the god bellowed. Jack fell back against Aster, both gripping the cool thin railing to keep their ground in the winds of Father Winter's angry breath. "You expect me to grant you suffering? You expect me to let you fall from immortality? To take back what I gave you when you were still little more than a chill in the air?"

He sighed, and the ancient divinity calmed, returning to his natural pale tones, and lifting the mists. The sprites steadied, Aster pushing Jack off of him. "You cannot know, Jack," the god said so softly, "the misery of Man. You are beyond that. When I made you, I gave _happiness_ itself life, a name, and my love... how can you ask me to undo your very nature, and curse you with the woes of humanity?"

Jack's blue eyes fell to the chipped floor below his feet, brows knitting.

"But father," he spoke up, lifting his sullen face. "If you keep me here... I _won't_ be happy. And _that_ will undo me."

Father Winter sighed again, pressing his fingers to his weary brow.

"Wait another three or four centuries. Then perhaps-"

"But that's too late!" Jack cried.

The god trained his moon-like eyes on his child, and realization slowly filled them. "Why is it you want to be human, Jack?" he asked, brows drawing together.

Jack Frost wet his lips, and sent his agitated gaze this way and that.

"Well," he started, smoothing down his windswept locks. "I've found this mortal..."

"Oh bloody hell," Aster grumbled behind him, rubbing a palm over his lightly whiskered face.

Father Winter merely stared. "And you have fallen for this mortal?" he guessed.

Jack chuckled and nodded. "He's..." he paused, wondering how he could begin to describe the young horseman. "He's so beautiful."

The god considered his love-struck creation. Now his playful heart lay on the line, and the father would do all in his power not to let it break. "You don't know that he'll return your regard," he pointed out calmly. "If I sent you to him, he might turn you back. And what then, Jack?"

Jack's eyes were wide with sudden doubt, but his lips were tight with conviction. "Then at least I'd know," said the sprite after a beat. "You have to let me try at least."

Father Winter closed his eyes. Then he nodded, and they were open and gleaming.

"I will give you until spring," the god slowly began. "You will be human _but_ – if by the first sign of winter's end, this mortal never shows you love to match your own, you return to our realm. Only if you win his heart will you stay."

Jack gaped at his father, then let out a gasping laugh, bright and tuneful as a minstrel's fife. He dashed forward and threw himself against the god's white robes, holding tight as he could against the ethereal fabric.

Father Winter kissed his youngest child's brow, and with that last touch, all fell to black around the winter sprite, and he was falling.

* * *

-To be continued-

* * *

A/n: Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel p I cannot do accents. ^^ Yeeeeurp~


	3. Jack Overland

**A/n**: So I crawled out of my hole for a shitty update... yaaaay... zzzzzzz...

Omg no but you guys reading this, I do hope you enjoy, not sure why you're here lol. Also I believe I warned about oocness earlier... yeah, that's going off the charts in this chapter. Jack really is entirely too cheerful. 'Cause he's a ninny. I dunno I guess in this he represents a being devoid of human experience... he can't feel pain, he can't feel a vast range of emotions, hasn't really experienced strong personal attachment before... yeah so he's a bit different :B

Mega crappy dialogue warning! Heed me! Turn back all ye of little tolerance for very kitsch dialogue...

Also - good e'en = good evening, good den = good day... I think that's as medieval as I get. There was actually a draft with a _prithee _and _methinks _but I just couldn't go through with it.

* * *

-Chapter 3: Jack Overland-

* * *

Jack woke.

He shot upright, and a flurry of snow flew from his shoulders. He breathed. Cold bit at him, and damp clothes clung to his trim frame. Brown eyes batted against a rush of wind – no longer his servant – and short chestnut hair ruffled at his brow. The once-immortal looked down at his hands, felt at the brown cloak o'er his shoulders and the cream shirt beneath. His palm found a rhythm inside him, moving strange warmth through his body at a dancing tempo.

Jack Frost clambered out of the snow bank, staggering under the new weight of blood in his limbs. As his waving arms sought balance, a broad smile crept over his chapped lips, and glee rounded his eyes.

His nose itched. The newly-made human rubbed at the foreign tingling with amazement, and he started laughing. Then his mortal eyes turned to his woodsy surroundings, and awe stilled his giddy grin as he caught sight of snow-decked houses through the leaf-bare trees. Jack stumbled through the last bit of forest, and stepped into the little town of Burgess.

Along the hints of cobblestone through the white slush, humans bustled by, tugging onto furs and cloaks to stay warm. Children ran. Horses clopped. Merchants called out to prospective customers, and craftsmen hammered metal into wood. Hens scurried underfoot. A shouting man with a purpling face hurried after a patched sow wandering by the stables.

An elderly woman's deep cerulean eyes met Jack's gaze, and she smiled. She could see him. For the first time, a human saw him, and when she greeted him a good e'en, he could say it back and be heard – with a bat of eyes and rise of eyebrows as he nearly shouted the expression back at her. Jack grinned and scampered through the cluster of people, calling out eager "hello!"'s and "good den!"'s as though it were a holiday.

His unsteady gait nearly sent him tumbling into a thick young man, who simply grunted and pushed past him. Jack just laughed sheepishly, shifting on his feet to restore stability.

"Shouting and stumbling like a drunkard," a familiar voice rose from the street clatter. "Off to a corker of a start, are we?"

Jack frowned, squinting at the faces around him for the speaker. It couldn't possibly be—

"Down here, ya clod!" said the voice, and Jack followed it down to a little gray hare, sitting up on its hind-legs in the middle of the street. Its pale green eyes seemed to glare at him, and the white snout twitched crossly.

The young man eyed the rabbit, lifting a brow.

"..._Aster_?" he guessed, stooping down before the hare. The fur was the color of spring sprite's thick hair, and the bright eyes were hard to mistake. "What are you doing here, and _why_ are you—"

"You think the old man would let ya go alone?" the transfigured spring sprite interrupted. "Oh, no – _you_, Jack, have a knack for finding trouble. And this the form Winter selected, alright?"

Jack grinned, detecting annoyance in the hare's pride-puffed chest. "So in the face of danger, I can call on you to nibble at my enemies?"

"I am here," Aster drawled drily, "to keep an eye on you – not to act as your protector. This form is just for watching and guiding."

"Well that's fortunate, since I don't imagine carrots are among the greatest perils here," the young man noted playfully.

"Oh rack off," the hare huffed, "ya bloody knave."

"I've yet to _begin_," Jack laughed, conjuring up every jibe to mind concerning hares. But another voice cut into his unsaid jests, straying them every which way in his head with that sound he knew so well.

"Ah, sorry, can I get around?"

Jack turned his eyes slowly, and they met a metal peg near his bent head. His face then followed his eyes and tilted upward, past faded browns and greens, past thick furs hanging from slight shoulders, to a freckled complexion haloed with unkempt reddish locks.

The young man sprang to his feet so quickly that for a moment he was blinded and groundless. A warm hand pushed back against his chest to keep him from falling forward, but it was gone the second his vision returned, and he was looking eye-to-eye with the reason he was breathing air.

"Hiccup!" he exclaimed breathlessly.

The youth, a little shorter than he and just as slender, with a woven basket hoisted over his shoulder, frowned. "Do I know you?" he asked with a puzzled quirk to his brow.

"Um, no," Jack admitted clumsily. "I just, it was a guess – is your name Hiccup? You look like a 'Hiccup' – or no but not, that is, in a good sense!"

"Thought this through, have you?" Aster grumbled from the ground. The only ears that heard him were Jack's, still attune to immortal voices.

Hiccup blinked at the 300-year-old with tight-lips and a wry squint. "You _guessed_ that my name is Hiccup," he repeated, completely deadpan.

"Well, it's not so uncommon, is it?" the brunet tried, chuckling nervously. "I've known many 'hiccups,' and they're all good ones – good and loud and never going away until you fright them off, or else drown them in sugar..."

The redhead's lips twitched slightly at that. "Then you also know that 'Hiccup's come and go," he said lightly, stepping around Jack into an opening in the bustle of townsfolk, "as they choose."

And with a little half-smile and a parting nod, the young human turned back to the road. Jack was too caught in the curve of Hiccup's lips to realize right away that his beloved was leaving. With a dawning jolt, he scurried after the other boy and skidded to his side, a muttering Aster hopping close behind.

"Where are you off to?" he asked, trying to keep slightly ahead to see the younger man's face. "Aren't the stables back that way?"

Hiccup sent Jack a narrow sideways glance, slowing his pace some. "Did you _guess_ I work in the stables too?" he asked a little sharply, though his eyes held no threat in them.

"Uh, that is..." Jack mumbled, scratching the back of his neck. His fingers jittered so strangely in this human form. "You see I, well – there's an explanation to that, there is! ...And I'm approaching it, I am, in just a moment..."

"Try not to do yourself an injury, meantime," the shorter youth advised with a roll of his eyes, as Jack desperately tried to recover himself.

"The truth is – I saw you working there earlier!" he exclaimed brightly, because it _was _the truth, and by his judgment a perfectly acceptable answer.

Hiccup turned his sardonic green gaze back to the brunet.

"I keep the doors shut in winter. What, were you peeping through the windows like a boy at the lady's privy, or did you hide in the hay like a thief?"

Jack's hopeful grin collapsed. "I," he said, stumbling into another disgruntled townsman, who merely grunted reproachfully as he passed, "neither! I just – I saw you go in?"

The young man cringed. Even he wasn't convinced by his own sorry explanations, and now Hiccup thought he was a degenerate imbecile and he'd never give him the chance to prove him otherwise and everything was going so wrong and – was Hiccup laughing?

Yes, behind pressed lips, muffled chuckles rose as the youth eyed him like a man watching a pup chase its tail.

Here was a position Jack Frost had only ever inflicted and never before filled – the unwitting mark of a playful taunt.

"Didn't I tell you not to do yourself an injury?" Hiccup reminded him cheekily, smirking a bit. "I'm only fooling, don't lose your head over it."

Jack returned the smirk with a full grin, relief crashing into him so hard and fast he didn't even think to move or say anything more until Aster advised he shut his hanging trap.

"Unless drooling is your method of courtship," he added.

"What are you called?" Hiccup asked over the rabbit's snark.

"Jack Fro—ow!" the young man glared down at Aster, who was just removing his little teeth from the bit of exposed skin above Jack's ankle. "Hey! What are you—"

"Oh, if ya want to be thought a madman, by all means, tell him you're Jack Frost." Aster growled. "Humans _know _your name, Jack – as well as they know Puck or the Sandman. Are ya really going to try to tell him you're Jack Frost, the notorious maker of winter mischief?"

Jack huffed. "Okay, you're right," he sighed.

"About?" the youth questioned with a raised brow.

"Ah, not you," Jack said quickly, about to gesture to Aster before the hare kicked his boot, and he swallowed his explanation.

"Were you," Hiccup began quietly, lips spreading wide enough to show small dimples at their ends, "talking to the hare?"

The once-sprite forced an unconvincing chuckle. "Ha, well, I... is that strange?"

"Not to me," the youth said with a shrug. "Though I may not be the one to ask... Look, I really have to run this errand, right? So you'll excuse me, Jack...?"

As Jack realized Hiccup was waiting for his surname, the young man looked around him frantically for inspiration. He found it on the first piece of writing his eyes met in the streets, scribbled across a beat sign over an inn.

"Over – Land," he read experimentally, quickly repeating himself with an enthusiastic, "Overland! Jack Overland."

The redhead blinked. "What, like the inn?"

"Ah, no! _Not _like the inn, see it's actually spelled very differ—"

"Alright then," Hiccup cut him off with a little chuckle. "Well good den, Jack Overland."

Jack smiled like a sated spaniel. "Good den, Hiccup," he said back, before the love of his immortal life turned to back to the cobbled road.

* * *

-To be continued-

* * *

**A/n**: Durhahaha Jack is a dope~


	4. The Troubadour of Burgess

**A/n**: Wow you guys are such sweeties! Thanks so much for reading~ You win an early update lol :P

Er, so, I'm pretty sure this Jack is basically what would happen if a puppy suddenly turned into a human. o.o He is so clueless and excitable hahaha oh dear...

* * *

-Chapt 4: The Troubadour of Burgess-

* * *

A peculiar gurgle rose from the pit of Jack's belly, startling him to a halt. The young man pressed his hands to his middle, where the funny noise had left a tiny ache, like something inside him was slowly caving in on itself.

"Aster?" Jack called unsurely, frowning at the snowy street below. "Something's wrong..."

The hare looked back at him with a skeptical quirk of his ears, wriggling his nose in an investigative sniff. "What _now_?"

"It's..." the perplexed youth couldn't describe the strange pressure in him. "It feels funny – here," he patted his stomach.

Aster rolled his pale eyes. "You're probably just hungry, Jack," he suggested impatiently.

Jack Frost blinked. "Oh..." he murmured, then a big grin spread over his face. "Oh! I know about that! Then I should eat, yes?"

"Nay, you should stand there and wallow – of course eat! Crikey..."

With an impish little laugh, the young man scuttled past the rabbit, deliberately kicking up snow in the grouchy sprite's tiny face. He wandered along the rows of shops, peeking curiously into the coarse glass windows at the blur of light and motion within, until he reached the Over Land Inn. A man burst through the screechy wooden doorway, and past him Jack glimpsed platters with bread and meat, and men lifting mugs to their dry lips.

The youth stepped into the inn with the wide-eyed interest of an untrained hound, and gleefully approached the withered innkeeper at his post.

"Good den, sir," the man greeted in a deep, tired voice, leaning his thick knuckles against the old counter before him.

"Good den!" Jack piped back. "Might I have a meal?"

"What d'you want?"

Jack's grin wavered to a confused frown. Had he asked it wrong? "I... want a meal?" he tried again.

"Aye, and what d'you want it to _be_?" the elderly man inquired with a snappish tone. "There's some turkey left from this morn, you want some of that? Bread? Wine?"

"_Oh_... yes that then!"

"Ten pence."

The young man blinked. "What?"

"For the _meal_!" the innkeeper drawled, looking about ready to clock Jack's crown. "Ten pence for a plate of hot food."

"What's... a pence?"

"If you don't have it, out with you!"

"But—"

"Out!" within a few blinks of an eye, the innkeeper was shooing the mortal sprite out of the warm building and into the streets, slamming the door in his bewildered face.

"What did I do?" he asked angrily, but the door gave no answer.

"All that time playing with the humans," Aster's voice mused from below, "did ya really learn _nothing_ of their way?"

"I don't understand, what's a pence?" the youth wondered, dragging his chilled feet away from the inn.

"_Money_, Jack," the hare snapped, hopping up to Jack's side. "Ya can't just take what ya want, ya have to _bargain_. The innkeeper wanted a trade for his food."

The young man threw up his willowy arms. "Well why didn't he _say _that, then?" he exclaimed, still utterly flabbergasted by the old man's nonsensical request for this _ten pence_.

"He _did_, ya bloody idiot! Money is how they trade. Look, ya want a bite to eat, ya need money."

Jack groaned, stabbing the toe of his boat into the snow. "So how do I get _that_?" he asked, growing tired of this funny twinge in his belly.

"Trade for it," the hare suggested. "Offer a hand for pay, or a skill – if by some miracle you have any."

"Alright," Jack sighed, running his fingers through the dark locks at his knotted brow. "Then what you're saying is... if I give someone a hand with their work... they'll give me money... and if I give that to the innkeeper... he'll give me food and I won't be hungry anymore!" he finished excitedly, finally grasping the concept.

"Caught up, have you?" the hare commented snidely, but the young man was too engrossed in this new idea to care.

In the last hours of the daylight, Jack Fr– er, Overland – checked in every shop and knocked at every door, asking for work. But whenever a chore was offered him, the newborn human's natural mischief caused one catastrophe after another, and left a mess where're he went. He started juggling eggs and dropped them, he slid dishes across tables until they flew off and shattered against the floor, he teased cows until they chased him from their pen, and instead of wringing a small hen's neck, he freed it.

The sky was turning to bright lilac hues, and Jack's determination was beginning to sway with his heavy head. Being human was proving far more difficult than the winter sprite had wagered... but the choice was made, and he would make it again. No discomfort, no matter how strange, could keep him from where his heart had snared.

But the hollow gnawing inside became hard to ignore, and the cold, once his closest friend, no longer met him with kindness.

Bright voices caught his numbing ears, and he smiled a little despite his fall out with lady luck. The familiar, high-pitched shouts of children were almost like warmth to the once-spirit.

"They are so!"

"Nay!"

"We're too old for that rot!"

"But mum says they're real!"

"Then your mum is a loon!"

"Take that back!"

"I'll tell if you fight again, don't think I won't!"

Turning a corner, the young man happened upon three little lads and two taller lasses. One of the girls, a big child with a wide face, held her fists up to the smallest boy, who glared back at his nemesis with a set jaw.

"Mother never lies," he insisted. "She's seen them! Fairies are _real_!"

"They're just stories for _children_," the girl sneered, as though she herself were quite the grown lady. Then she pulled back her arm to let a blow fall.

Before it could, a whir of snow knocked off her red cap, and the startled child staggered. "Hey!" she whined, swiveling towards her attacker. But as she and the others noticed the young man in their midst, that secretive veil children wear in the presence of unknown adults fell over them.

"What do you mean 'just stories?'" Jack asked, full of exaggerated offense as he drew closer to the young crowd. "Don't you believe them?"

The girl stuck up her chin bravely at the stranger. "Too old for that," she claimed quietly.

"Too _old_?" the man repeated, shocked. "_I _believe in them. And I'm 300!"

"You're not _300_," one of the boys objected.

"Why not?"

"You don't look it," he explained matter-of-factly, while the others nodded. "Old people look like prunes. And their hair falls out."

"Well," Jack said, squatting to their heights, "300 is old for a _person_, yes, but it's barely full-grown for a _sprite_."

The big girl laughed. "You can't be a _fairy_," she snorted. Even the little boy looked doubtful.

"Not _anymore_," the young man clarified freely, over Aster's distant grumbling. "Father Winter changed me."

"Who's that?" the boy whose mother saw fairies asked, dark eyes blinking.

"You don't know Father Winter?" Jack gasped. "He lives in the clouds, and he makes blizzards when he blows his horn to call his children home."

"His children?" the smaller little girl chimed in.

"The sprites," the ancient trickster explained, as the listening boys and girls began to incline their heads and lean forward. "They make sure the leaves turn and fall when they ought." Jack mimed a falling leaf with his hands, sweeping it as though caught in the wind. "Then they cover them with snow and ice, and when that melts, they open the flowers and wake the animals."

"But I've never seen one," the persistent girl protested.

"That's because they're hiding," Jack replied. "Father Winter masks them as air so they can't be seen."

"Then how do you know they're real?"

"Because I _was_ one!"

"We don't know that," one of the boys snapped.

"Alright, how else do you explain the wind, or the rain, if not someone's breath and tears? How do you explain the animals all waking at once, if someone isn't rousing them?" Jack turned to the smallest boy with a smile that could set any fear to rest. "Why do you think your nose gets so cold in the winter," he asked, reaching out, "if it isn't a freezing sprite's fingers pinching you?" The young man tapped the end of his long finger lightly against the boy's nose, who chuckled and pulled back with a little grin.

"What else do they do?"

"Well they're not all season sprites. Winter's children aren't the only fairies... you've probably heard of Robin Goodfellow."

A chorus of "no"'s sounded.

"What! But he's the best known of us all – he's an even bigger trickster than _I_, and I once tripped the Bogeyman himself."

"You did?!"

"How?"

"Weren't you scared?"

"What does he look like?"

"But who's Robin Goodfellow?"

The sun began to dip past the hilly horizon by the time the tale of the Bogeyman's unfortunate encounter with a silly winter sprite had ended. Jack spoke like every twist and turn in the story was new even to him, animating it with his hands, changing his face and his voice with each character, jumping up at all the exciting parts and crouching low at the slow, suspended moments. He only had eyes for the awed little faces leaning eagerly towards the curious storyteller, and didn't notice at first that his audience's numbers were growing.

People stopped in the street to hear the end of the scene, children dragged their parent's hands towards the funny man with all the other kids, and their voices joined the little boys' and girls' laughter.

At the tale's end, the children clapped their little mitted hands together, and asked for another. But by now, darkness was lurking over the town, and adults were claiming their children from the night.

"What about Robin Goodfellow?" a child asked sadly, as his mother called for him.

"I can tell you all about him tomorrow," Jack promised with a wink, as the boy's smile seemed to dispel the falling gloom.

To Jack's astonishment, the men and women who stayed for the story tossed coins at him as they parted, with good-natured laughs. He picked up the three pieces handed him, studying the little round nuggets inquisitively.

"Uh – are these pence?" he asked of the smallest boy, whose parents had yet to snatch him up.

"Nay," the child said upon inspection. "Those are farthings, and that's a shilling!"

The young man sighed miserably. "But I need ten pence!"

"That's more than ten pence," the boy laughed. "It's at least – um – let's see... 11 – no – 12 and-a-half pence!"

Jack gaped, staring incredulously at the little coins. "_This_ is 12 pence?" he asked, baffled that three could somehow count as twelve.

"Aye. Strange, isn't it?" the boy admitted, offering Jack his gap-toothed grin.

"I'll never understand this," the young man declared, shaking his head.

"Nay, you'll get it! _I _did... you just have to practice."

With a grateful smile, Jack asked for the child's name.

"James," he said. "James Bennet."

"Well, Mr. Bennet," Jack addressed formally, though his playful eyes ruined any charade of reserve. "Perhaps you can teach me."

"Aye!" James agreed, before he excused himself to run home to his supper.

Jack finally procured his own supper from the bitter innkeeper, making the most surprised and amazed faces for every new taste on his tongue, for the curiously enjoyable sensations of gulping and chewing, and for the odd burn of ale in his throat. When he'd reached the bottom of his mug, the world appeared a tad askew, and it was a bit difficult for him to pinpoint an exact thought.

What did humans do at this hour again, when it was too dark to see much by candle or firelight, too tiresome to run around any more?

The rather tipsy youth stumbled back out into the cold, holding his coat close to him. After the food, he hadn't enough to rent a room... and he was so very tired... and where the devil had Aster hopped off to?

He tripped, and instead of rising, Jack simply curled up to the wall of the nearest house, tucked in his cloak against the wind. It was freezing and hard, but there was nowhere else to go.

"...Jack?"

The young man's eyes opened, and looked into the concerned green of his beloved's gaze.

"Are you alright?" Hiccup asked, stooping over him.

"Oh – ye-es!" he replied, teeth clattering. "F-fine! Just... c-catching some – sleep! _That's _w-what they do... hello ag-gain by the wa-ay..."

Hiccup didn't appear assuaged by the jerky answer. "Haven't you anywhere to stay?" he prodded.

"Not a-as of yet, n-no... "

With a sigh, the one-legged youth reached out. "Alright, come on."

He hoisted Jack up with a strenuous tug and a grunt, while the other youth found his feet, leaning slightly on Hiccup for balance. He smelled like hay...

Hiccup led Jack around to the front of the building – oh, it was the stables! – and ushered him inside, shutting the great doors on the freezing winds. The horses snorted softly, filling the room with the light scuffle of hooves and gentle whips of their tails. Hiccup plucked a lantern from the wall, and urged the cold young man towards the back of the stables, where a ladder was propped up against a small alcove not far under the ceiling. Once Jack was deemed sober enough to climb up, the two made their way into the little nook above the horses. A few books, a trunk, and a bed of hay covered with a thick blanket greeted them.

The stable boy tugged Jack to the make-shift bed, but the young man started to resist, beginning to register the offer Hiccup was making.

"You know the floor is lovely actually, I think I'll just—"

"Don't be a fool," the youth cut in, pulling harder. "It's freezing."

"The cold's not so bad," he tried. "Old friend, you know..."

"Oh come _on_," Hiccup protested, "I'm not _that _dreadful a bedfellow!"

Jack faltered, and the shorter man pressed his advantage. "N-no – but I am! The worst!"

Hiccup laughed softly. "You're not getting out of it," he dismissed. "We'll not have you catch something in this weather."

"But suppose—"

"_No_."

"Yes but—"

"_Jack_," the youth groaned, shaking his head. "Alright look, I'm sorry you find this so distressing. I'd offer to sleep on the floor, but I think we both would do better to share heat under the same cover, yes?"

"...Well."

"So come on, then!"

When Hiccup finally doused the lantern's feeble light, they were back-to-back in the hay, and Jack couldn't help but take solace in the warmth beside him – particularly in knowing just whose warmth it was...

* * *

**A/n**: Okay pulling one of those cheap oh hey let's force them to sleep in the same bed tropes XP Oh well, I wanted Hic in this chapter, so bed trope it is~

Hey though strange bedfellows were a totally accepted thing back in the day! Although I think usually it was with friends or in like inns... don't know how many people would actually pull a stranger off the street and drag them to their bed. But then Hiccup is a special little snowflake ;P

Thanks again for reading!


	5. A Little Wooden Chest

**A/n**: Wait holy crap wait are people actually reading this? :,D Omfg you guys, thanks for reading~

This chapter was a bit of a toughie for several reasons... it might hurt a bit. ._.

* * *

-Chapter 5: A Little Wooden Chest-

* * *

Sunlight pervaded the shallow lids of Jack's eyes, reaching through the thick fog of sleep to stir his senses. The young sprite squinted between his dark, quivering eyelashes, still partway caught inside the extraordinary world of his own mind, unlocked and free to run where're it chose. But that world grew distant and dim, until the doorway to dreams closed, and wakefulness seized the youth so suddenly that he tumbled right out of the hay.

Facing the floorboards for one groggy moment, the youth slowly picked himself up, beating straw out of his vest. It took several eye-blinks to recognize the smells and the sounds of a horse stable, and a soft laugh from below the alcove returned every straying piece of the previous day back to Jack.

He was down the ladder in an instant, hopping off from the third-to-last ring and turning – to find himself staring into a long black face.

The stallion cried out, tossing its great mane and stomping its menacing hooves. Jack stumbled back, falling over in his startled haste, and gaped up at the beast from the stone floor.

"Fury!" Hiccup's voice called over the horse's ruckus, and the young man appeared suddenly between Jack and the stallion, reaching up with open palms for the riled creature. "Hey," he said gently, rubbing along his friend's black snout, "Easy... easy, boy..."

Like an enchantment, the skinny youth stilled the fiery warhorse with his soft words and a simple touch. He turned back to the fallen young man with a wry little grin, offering his hand.

"Sorry... Fury puts on a tough show," Hiccup said as he helped Jack to his feet. "But he's just frightened. Let him get used to you, he'll be no more danger than a toothless pup."

At that, Fury snorted almost indignantly, bumping his nose against his little friend's back, who turned and ruffled the whiney giant's mane with a fond chuckle.

Breakfast thwacked Jack's chest when the other youth tossed it back to him, and rolled in his palm like a little red and green-patched ball. Its hide under his teeth was thick, and when he bit, juices sprang out from the wound, sweet and sticky, dripping down his chin. At its center, tough sinews protected four little black seeds, aligned below the tiny branch at the top.

When Jack looked up from the odd little feast, Hiccup was staring with very round eyes and a risen brow.

"Ah... not many apples where you come from?"

The dark-locked young man shook his head, rubbing his knuckles over his moist lips. "No, none... is that what it was?"

"Aye," Hiccup replied, shifting his one good foot and turning his glance to the floor, running his fingers over the back of his neck. "And you may find it, um, a little simpler, perhaps, _not _to eat the core next time..."

"Oh..."

The day was fairer than the one before, though a cold wind stung the tips of Jack's ears. At his side, Hiccup led two dappled ponies by their reigns, a mare and a stallion with identical cream and chocolate-splashed hides, into the busy streets. The horseman didn't ask after his odd, excitable bedfellow's history, and his eyes turned distant at every question about his own, giving curt, dry answers that hardly touched the tip of the incredible tale Jack already knew by heart – at least its beginning, and the open page he now played a part in. Whatever was in between, Hiccup hadn't even told the horses, and by his elusive smiles and simple shrugs, he had no intention of sharing it anytime soon.

The path turned, and the tallest house of the town rose at its end. Hiccup instructed Jack not to follow as he delivered the beasts to his awaiting lord and lady. His employers were the wealthiest in Burgess – few were well enough off to own a riding horse, let alone _two_. As a wealthy family is sometimes wont to, it was composed of doted-upon children and idle parents, and to the stable boy's incredible fortune, they had determined that riding was an acceptable means of staving off boredom.

At the least, it was preferable to the children's usual habits. Even Jack could hear their voices faintly from where he stood, houses away, shrieking and growling at one another like a pair of fighting cats. He glimpsed their distant figures struggle in the doorway, an adolescent flaxen-haired duo, nearly identical in all but dress. One wore breeches, and the other a frock, the fine garb on both quite tussled from their antics. Each fought to be the first to reach the approaching ponies, pulling hair and kicking ankles. Hiccup seemed to stiffen a bit as they ran at his four-legged charges, but the boy bravely kept his pace.

Jack laughed at the rambunctious twins bearing down on the horseman, when a loud "_Ahem_," turned his attention behind him.

"Aster!" the young man greeted the hare cheerily, despite the sprite's perpetual scowl. It lost all its usual intimidation in that fluffy disposition.

"Been lookin' for your sodding bum all night! Shoulda guessed you wouldn't be far from _him_."

"Aw, were you lost?" cooed Jack, reaching down to pet the rabbit's pricked ears. Aster batted back the approaching hand with his little paws, only making himself appear even less threatening.

"I'll have you know," the animal snapped, "I had a run-in with the village butcher." His small body shivered slightly, from his nose to the little ball of a tail at his back. "Humans! Think they can just skin anythin' they get their mitts on."

The youth winced. He should have kept a closer eye! "Well, you're in one piece anyhow," he noted, eyes searching his fellow sprite up and down to be sure. "Let's not lose you again, though. Not much use if you end up in a stew, are you?"

But Aster scoffed. "Oh, save your worryin'," he dismissed, puffing out his tiny white chest. It might have been a majestic gesture, were he not mere inches tall. "I can look out for my _own_ back!"

Jack's lips stretched to one side, eyes alight with wicked mirth as he poked the bunny's furry belly. It squeaked, proud posture slipping to an instinctive curl inward, tucking its chin into its chest and holding its paws up near the disgruntled face. With a bark of laughter, the young man rose back to his full height, staring down the sprite triumphantly. "Aye, only a fool would face such a brute!" he taunted.

The hare started to retort, but a sharp sound from the streets turned Jack's head. It was a voice, breaking out in frantic speech over the usual town bustle. The curious young man wandered with a frown towards the strange din, and in one of the alleys branching from the main road, Jack saw a man. He was broad like an ox and tall as a rearing stallion. His beard fell from his chin like wool off an old black sheep's ailing back, and his garments spoke of worn luxury, stained and musty but stitched with precision, and ornamented in decadent colors.

In his thick, grease-caked hands, he held a little wooden chest with rusty metal hinges. A smaller, finer set of fingers also curled around the object, struggling to wrench it from the man's grasp. They belonged to a little girl, no older than seven or eight, straining under a mess of untied, dirt brown hair, and a ragged frock. She was crying.

"No, no, no," she screeched, heaving with all her little might. "You can't take it!"

The man looked at her, and his eyes glimmered with chilling delight. He took a little wrist between his huge fingers, hauling her by it away from the box. Huffing through tears, the girl kicked and reached desperately for the chest, and he just held her there, laughing throatily while she struggled.

"That's all we have," wept the girl. "All he left..."

"Well if he's gone, he won't be needing this," the broad man jibed, voice deep and gritty. "Will he, now?"

Jack Frost had seen many a marvelous thing as a winter sprite. He'd watched dancers at a wedding weave to and fro from a mile above, like four-limbed, many-colored ants. He'd listened to songs unheard by all but the singer's own mortal ears, heard the whispers of children to their imaginary friends, knew of every kind of creature on any wintry part of the globe.

But in his unending youth, Jack never could see beyond what he was made of, never beyond play and joy. He ne'er looked on conflict or strife, wouldn't recognize it if he had. Father Winter's youngest son was not made to understand woe.

Jack Overland, with his mortal eyes, could see it now, streaming down the little girl's contorted face and ripping out of her throat. It was more foreign than any human sight or sensation his new body brought him. It sent something prickling just under his skin, strained his heart like a hand closing around it, and weighed his stomach down like a stone.

Brows met. Simmering confusion rose to an angry boil. "Hey," Jack called, drawing near them, not sure what he was doing, not heeding the hare trying to warn him against approaching.

The girl leaned down over the man's fist and bit him, making him shout and let her go. She went in for the chest, snatching it up from his loosened grasp, but then he grabbed her by the hair and yanked her nearly off her feet. With a horrible scream, the girl dropped her box and reached to ease the pressure on her head.

"Hey!" Jack was shouting, was running, didn't stop to think before crashing into the gigantic man, knocking his grip free of the child's locks.

When the burly gentleman turned on his much smaller attacker, Jack had only long enough to blink before a meaty arm swung out, and huge knuckles met soundly with the young man's face.

A starry veil fell over Jack's eyes. The Earth around him lurched.

He dropped into the snow's cold embrace like an anchor to the ocean's floor, heedless and heavy. Where the man's blow had fallen, a sudden _something _festered, made him gasp and press his palm to his face. It throbbed with a blinding heat he couldn't even describe, that knew no equal in his immortal existence.

His eyes pried open. Drops of red fell against white. Dragging the back of his hand under his nose, Jack squinted at a thick streak of blood on a quivering knuckle.

_Pain _finally had the once-immortal in its searing clutches.

Jack was jerked to his feet again by the collar of his cloak, and through his dizzy haze he saw the brutish man preparing another blow. But the man's attention snagged on the little girl kicking at his shins, and the little hare by his feet nipping at bulky ankles. All four parties struggled, shouting and shoving, until a fifth emerged under a rush of galloping hooves.

Fury's shrill cry silenced the alley. The colossal animal kicked up on its hind legs, silky mane whipping around the thick slope of its neck, and slammed down his front hooves before the brawling quartet. He snorted in the bully's face, tilting the long black head to face a sheening, defiant eye at the scraggly man's paling countenance.

"What's going on?"

The man scowled. He released the nape of Jack's cloak, letting the young man stumble away, and his dark eyes narrowed at the one-legged youth standing at the alley's entrance.

"Mind yer beast, boy!" he sneered. But his gaze dared not waver from the slender, cross-armed horseman.

Alert green eyes scanned the alley. When they met Jack's, gleaming extra bright under wildly strewn chestnut bangs, Hiccup's brow furrowed further.

"Still robbing Burgess blind, Alvin?" he asked calmly, turning back to the gigantic fellow.

Alvin's glare turned even nastier. "I should whip yeh 'til yeh bleed for talking like that…" he growled, stepping towards the youth. But without a second's hesitation, Jack staggered forward to block the man's path, backing up haggardly until he was standing in front of Hiccup, whose surprise at this rounded his blinking eyes.

Recovering from the dumbfounded half-moment, the horseman stepped around his tousled acquaintance, keeping him from pushing back between Alvin and Hiccup with a steady hand on Jack's shoulder. "Aye, well, much as I hate to deprive you of a senseless beating-" the youth began, but Alvin interrupted.

"Let me do my job, and _maybe _no one'll get too scuffed," he grunted, collecting the little chest from the ground. Resilient even now, the girl tried to claim it back.

"He wants my brother's chest!" she spat, an ugly glare splaying over the child's face. "It's all that's left of him."

"Won't be missin' it," chuckled Alvin. "Lot of good a chest is to the dead."

Death, Jack knew, was a passage Father Time hewed through his own fabric, leading souls from this world to another.

But now he wondered, what lonesome souls were the departed leaving behind...

"How much does the family owe?" Hiccup queried. The young man at his side frowned, about to ask what in heaven's name the horseman meant before a sharp glance shut his mouth.

"Eight shillings," replied the man slowly, suspicion sneaking into his eyes.

Hiccup's lips pursed a little, eyes lidding with seeming disinterest. "Alright then, I've a thought," he mentioned casually. "You can stay and wrestle a child for a box that isn't worth the heel of your boot," the youth began to propose, gesturing lightly to the chest, "or you can follow me and we'll get you a couple crowns. Enough for the debt and a little left over."

The gruff man considered Hiccup, rolling his chin like a chewing cow. "Bribing the sheriff, are we?" he chuckled, liking the sound of this proposal more by the eye-blink. "But there's no call for that, lad. I can have my fun _and_," he snatched out an arm and grabbed Hiccup's collar, dragging him forwards, "your little crowns."

Jack rushed towards them, but the only slightly frazzled horseman urged him back with a raised arm. The youth's eyes rolled, and an irritated scowl tightened his lips. "I haven't got them _on _me," he explained in an obvious tone to the greedy tax-collector. "Search me if you like. But if you want the crowns, you have to come with me."

After staring dubiously at the crafty boy for a few silent beats, the sheriff finally let Hiccup go. "No funny business," he warned, pointing a finger in his freckled face.

Hiccup smiled. "I?" he very nearly chirped. "'Funny business?' Nay, of course not!"

Another moment of distrust passed, but the man at last dropped the chest carelessly to the ground, and the youth with his steed began to lead the sheriff back to the stables. As they turned to go, Hiccup leaned near Jack's ear. "See her home," he murmured below Alvin's hearing, tilting his head back to the tear-streaked girl.

The girl had her brother's box tight in her little arms, almost cradling it like a wooden babe. She moved not, only sat for a moment with her prize. For all the world, she was the one who looked to have lost something, not won it.

Jack didn't like leaving Hiccup alone with the sheriff, but a heartsick child composed a scene too gloomy to allow. He said nothing at first, crouching beside her in the deserted alley.

"What's your name?" asked he.

"Emilia," mumbled she with a noisy sniff, rubbing her mitted palm vigorously over a red-tipped nose.

"Where are your parents?"

"Mum's out."

"Your father too?"

"Don't got one."

The young man chewed at his lower lip. At his side, Aster plopped down, silent, but there. When Jack turned to Emilia, he wore a bright smile over his unease.

"Do you want to play a game?"

Emilia glanced back at him, curiosity creeping around the grief in her coffee brown eyes.

"Let's get your chest home, and I'll show you how to play hopscotch, how's that?"

"...I like hopscotch."

When Hiccup returned to the alley, it was rife with laughter in the place of tears. A makeshift pattern was drawn in the snow, scuffed by boot prints and the occasional messy impression of an entire body. Out of Woe's reach, the little girl followed Jack's lead frantically across the pattern on one foot, heaving against him to trouble his balance in their one-footed race.

"That's not how you play!" she shouted, despite herself letting giggles poke through her indignation. "You're making that up – hey!"

"Am not!"

"Are," Emilia huffed, flinging herself at the youth, "too!"

At the impact, Jack fell out of the squiggly pattern of squares, rolling dramatically on his back. "What have you done?" he drawled accusingly, clutching at his chest as though he'd been stabbed.

"I win again!" she cried, throwing up her arms. Jack flopped his head theatrically back against the snow, shutting his eyes in overstated devastation.

They opened again to an upside-down view of Hiccup's faintly amused green eyes peering down at him.

"How is it that every time I let you alone, I find you again in a right mess?"

"Well messes have a habit of following me around," Jack explained, folding his palms behind his head. The untroubled gesture did nothing to righten the stuttering beat in his chest. "I've tried to lose them, but they always seem to know where to find me."

"I can see that," the horseman said with a little smile. "Perhaps you should learn to evade them better."

"Perhaps _you_ shouldn't let me alone," Jack countered, a bold grin on his lips despite the fretful antics of his insides.

The green gaze rolled away from Jack's cheeky face. Aster was mumbling something suspiciously akin to the word 'grotesque.'

"You really are a child," sighed Hiccup, though hints of his smile still played around his lips.

The day's errands passed quickly under a midday sun – Hiccup's to tend the town' s horses, Jack's to tend its children. His stories earned another day's food and drink, but more dear was the excited wonder he lit in child after child. At a breath between the two young men's work, Hiccup fastened a hand-woven saddle over Fury's vast back.

"Jack," he said, turning to the resting storyteller sitting atop a hay pile. The smaller youth grinned, and maybe Jack was only seeing through a love-struck haze, but he could swear there was a shyness in the awkward tilts of Hiccup's thin lips.

"Do you want to come for a ride?"

* * *

-To be continued...-

* * *

**A/n: **WELP. Jack rebounds like a bouncy ball. And Hiccup apparently lets Fury kinda roam where he wants. Coz he's like. A smart horse. Or something.

Also I hope it's clear that the name Fury refers to Night Fury and not _Nick_ Fury. I... don't know why it wouldn't but. ._.


	6. With Love's Light Wings

**A/n**: Ho hi yes good day, lazy update ^^ Had zero idea what to call this chapter so I stole it from Shakespeare ("With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls" - _Romeo & Juliet_). Oh bard sama senpai san~ Also I just found out that apparently _A Midwinter's Tale _is a f#$#R3ing 1995 Kenneth Branagh movie making fun of Shakespearean theater or something, go figure. o_O I already wasn't being original by combining _A Winter's Tale _with _Midsummer Night's Dream_, didn't know the unintended plagiarism went even farther...

So BTW if you haven't seen it you need to look at the fanarts for this right now because they're kind of really extremely gorgeous :,D (laryndawnDOTtumblrDOTcom/image/46812950931, laryndawnDOTtumblrDOTcom/image/51342122860, miundy-foxyDOTtumblrDOTcom/image/49364048054)

* * *

-With Love's Light Wings-

* * *

"Ah, Jack, you might want to hold on a _little _more than that."

The young man's palms loosely clasped the green sleeves over his freckled friend's narrow shoulders. Troubling his lower lip with a pinch of teeth, Jack tremulously inched himself forward along Fury's sleek back, closer up to Hiccup.

Mounting the feisty animal had taken something Jack never possessed in great quantities – patience. But Fury's little companion eventually calmed the suspicious snorts and wild-eyed glares, until he allowed the horseman's new friend to approach. As Hiccup stroked the horse's vast snout with one hand, his other curled around Jack's wrist, and brought the young man's palm up to replace his own against Fury's face.

Clambering up gracelessly on the tall steed behind Hiccup, Jack hadn't even made to touch the boy until he advised the young man to hold on.

Hiccup turned one of those small, crooked smiles onto Jack, dark brows laced with perplexed amusement.

"You're going to fall off," warned the youth over his shoulder, tightening the reigns between tough little fingers. "I can't smell any worse than you, so come on."

Color filled the young man's cheeks as his nervous chestnut gaze broke from Hiccup's, and he scooted until the distance between them was barely a fist's breadth. His hands wandered warily from the horseman's arms to grip at the thick vest just above his hipbones. Fingers curled around the edge of the open garment, and knuckles brushed the slimmer tunic beneath, tight at the waist over warm, warm skin.

Jack could feel the tremor of Hiccup's chuckle climb his slight sides. It must have been strange to the youth, that a man who picked a fight with someone at _least_ twice his size that very morning now had barely the gall to even touch the rider. The young man tottered so suddenly between brash and timid, Hiccup still didn't seem to know what to make of his foreign friend.

The slow trot through the town passed smoothly enough, but when the houses thinned and the trees loomed around their path, Fury whined and shook against the reigns. Hiccup held his four-legged friend in check, tilting towards the young man behind him.

"Fury wants a run," he explained, patting the horse's thick neck. "You ready?"

Jack only blinked and nodded, unsure what to expect.

"Best hang on, then."

That was his last warning before Fury shot suddenly ahead at a gallop that rivaled the fiercest winds.

The startled young man shouted and scrambled for a tighter grip on Hiccup, digging his face into the flying auburn curls. His arms reached all the way around the youth's slender frame, clinging for his newly begun life against the mad rush around them.

As the shock of sudden motion began to pass, brown eyes squinted open. The cool air whipped hard into his face and through his hair, tossing his cloak in a flying trail behind him. Pulling back slightly from the horseman's warmth, Jack watched the forest flash around them. He caught split-second images of pebbles and prints in the snow, of naked tree branches clattering in the wind, of squirrels dashing into the leafless bushes.

A weightless sensation crept over Jack's skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. Surrounded by wind, streaming through the world at an effortless swiftness – for the first time since his transformation, Jack almost felt as though he were flying again.

His laughter started in breathless little bursts near Hiccup's ear. It grew to a bright, full sound, at every a sharp turn, at the leaps over logs strewn in the narrowing path, at the horseman's own airy laughs shaking through his shoulders and chest, thrumming against Jack's hold.

The young man's bashful caution seemed to fly from his limbs like a loose cloth. He leaned close into the rider, chin meeting his fur-clad shoulder, while his grasp around Hiccup tightened. Though Jack couldn't see the youth's face, he could hear his breath stutter, and felt his back tense. Hiccup glanced back with a very slight turn of his head, only allowing Jack a glimpse of a red-tinged cheek. But he made no move to shake Jack off, and in a moment, the boy's tension began to ease.

All too soon, the youth steered the stallion around, and they were heading back to the edge of Burgess. Their pace lessened as Fury clopped over the town's cobblestone, and Jack finally loosened his embrace – if only a little.

He was all silent smiles until they reached the stable, hurriedly dismounting with a clumsy flourish and swiveling to offer Hiccup a hand. Alas, the horseman had made his own deft way down from his steed's back before he noticed Jack's outstretched palm.

"Chivalry works better on damsels, ye know," Aster's voice commented from within a little nest of hay.

Jack made a face in the rabbit's direction, biting down a grumble. When green eyes finally found his still open hand, the young man blinked and abruptly brought it behind his neck, grinning off the momentary setback. The nervous strain to his upturned lips settled when Hiccup smiled back. As always when his beloved smiled, Jack's odd human insides squirmed and quivered like little fowls against the cage of his skin. But his outward calm held under the grasp of growing nerve.

"...I have to, ah, get back to work," the freckled youth said quietly, backing towards the wooden gate to a patchy black and white mare's pen. But the chestnut-eyed young man followed, dispatching of the distance Hiccup placed between them with a bold step.

Hiccup stepped back again, smile turning meeker, a slight fluster flitting across the usually serene forest green eyes. His arms swung at his sides, head dipping a little as though preparing to speak, but all the sound that came past his mouth was an awkward chuckle.

The other young man's grin spread wider. He'd never seen shyness trip up the horseman before, neither as a sprit nor a bumbling stranger. But as a mysterious friend, he was granted the darling sight. Color bloomed over speckled skin, limbs shifted, lips pinched – for once, Hiccup looked less the part of the cunning horseman, and more of the gentle youth.

With a teasing cock of his head, the brunette took another step. His eyes sparked and his body leaned in the way of a cat playfully preying on its brother.

"You probably should be getting... back to your, your ah, business too, huh?"

Hiccup backed up again, but the mare behind him was quite through waiting quietly for her supper. She jutted her damp nose insistently against the stable boy's pinkish ear, startling him to a small jump away from her. He bumped into Jack.

It wasn't much of a collision, just a meeting of arms and shoulders. The touch was almost enough to drain Jack's mischief-driven courage, but like a breath over a kindling spark, touching Hiccup only stilled him for a second before his grit reignited. Now it rode not only on playful interest, but _yearning_ – it welled in his chest like an achy mid-run gasp. He wanted to know what the youth's face felt like between his palms, what he'd say if Jack's fingers curled over his, what new taste his lips might find if they—

SMACK!

Both young men started at a sharp sound from one of the stable windows. Aster sat up at attention, wriggling his nose suspiciously at a tiny fluttering mass of colors just beneath the partway-open glass. With a curious frown, Hiccup headed to the back window and stooped to investigate the little flapping thing on the ground.

A small voice reached Jack's ear.

"Oooh," it groaned. "It's been too long since I used this form..."

Scooped carefully between Hiccup's hands was a little bird, feathered with the most vibrant greens, blues and yellows. Its dizzily blinking eyes were a deep purple, perched above a long, exotic beak.

"I think it hit the window pane," Hiccup called back to an approaching Jack, keeping his voice low so as not to alarm the little creature. The youth studied the odd bird with a growing smile. "Looks alright, though... what are you doing here so late in the season, hm? Lose your flock?"

Aster's ears stood straight up. "...Tiana?"

The bird hopped up out of Hiccup's hold and perched on his wrist. "Aster!" it chirped. "_There _you are!"

"What are you _doing _here?" the rabbit echoed the human.

"Winter thought you could use a hand – or rather a wing," Tiana giggled, only cooing sweetly to a mortal's hearing, "to tuck over his little fledgling."

"Oh, so he sent a powerhouse over, did he?" the hare sneered, rolling his eyes. "Your form is the size of my _tail_. I don't think I need help from it."

"I've never seen a bird like this before," Hiccup murmured over the sprites' voices, oblivious to the immortal sounds. Knelt beside the horseman, Jack could only rub his forehead while the animals argued, trying to figure out how to speak to the newcomer without looking like a dupe in front of Hiccup.

Tiana was a powerful summer spirit, her bright green and yellow hair made of feathers, and clothes sewn delicately from the blades of long grass. Bred from Mother Earth herself and Oberon, the Fairy King, Tiana was one of the eldest sprites, though her voice and stature were among the smallest. As with all half-breeds of the nature gods and the simple woodland fairies, two great, many-colored wings stretched out from her slender back.

A tiny incarnation of those wings flapped perkily when Tiana's purple eyes looked on Jack.

"He really did it!" she remarked, flitting off one boy and up into the face of the other.

"Wh- hey!" Jack protested, squeezing his eyes shut when she flew in close enough to poke them with that rather sharp-looking beak.

"I can't believe he turned you human!"

"Okay, okay, just – hey, calm down!" the young man urged, trying to wave her out of his face. But the unapologetic half-fairy found her perch at the tip of his nose, peering into his chestnut eyes with apparent fascination. He sighed, glaring at her somewhat cross-eyed. "Would you _kindly_ get off of my face?" he tried, deadpan.

"Ah! Look at those teeth!" the sprite squeaked, dipping upside down from her perch to ogle the funny human mouth, an aspect of mortals that bamboozled her to no end. "They're like pearls still in the clam!"

Fortunately for Jack's poor nose, Hiccup's laughter startled the bird from her roost. "Someone likes you," he chuckled.

"Well perhaps _someone_ should mind where she pokes her beak," the young man replied testily, glowering at the teensy sprite hopping along his arm. At his glare, Tiana settled down obediently on his shoulder, cocking her little green head at him meekly.

"Oh... sorry," she peeped.

Jack heaved a sigh, while Aster scurried up on the young man's knee to start up his argument again with the other sprite. Laughing softly again, the horseman made to return to his chores, shaking his bemused head. What was it about Jack that drew even the most skittish of little critters to him, without the slightest fear?

As a cherry petal evening blossomed in the west, slowly soaking in the daylight from the little town's dimming streets, young James and his friends found the silly storyteller just outside the stables. As promised, they were met with the legend of Robin Goodfellow – or as others may know him, mischievous Puck, servant to Tiana's winged father. Unlike the nature sprites, woodland fairies dealt not in the shifting ways of weather, but in the fickle ways of human hearts. It was they who struck the eyes of one with that sudden, feverish adoration for another. They teased and pricked at human patience until it ruptured without warning, and every inexplicable little jolt of inspiration or thrill was of their otherworldly making.

Puck's comical misadventure in Thebes earned Jack enough for a hot piece of honeyed bread and a small jug of cool milk, purchased from a little market that donned no tables or stools. So he chewed on the sweet, pliant supper as he walked back ho- back to the stables, Tiana fluttering above his head and Aster hopping about his feet.

But his blithe munching slowed when he noticed the eyes trained on him from the street sides, gaping eyes above hollow cheeks, around tattered hoods and shawls. They held such a strange gleam that he couldn't name, not so fierce as the burly sheriff's, yet there was no kindness in them. His pace quickened, and peace of mind was only reached when he stood within the warmth of the wooden barn.

"Hiccup," he called out, kicking the door shut with a boot. "Have you tried this before? I didn't know honey was so sweet, no wonder bees go to all the trouble..."

The stable boy peered out from one of the ponies' pens, wearing a funny cross between a smile and... well _something_, something more forlorn than a smile should ever be.

"Honey, hm?" he commented a little half-heartedly, drawing back into the pen to brush down the animal's dappled coat. "Aye, I've tried that before."

"Have you dined yet?" The young man hurried over to stand just outside the pen, looking in on the working youth. "Come on and you can get one of these too—"

A brusque hum-like laugh cut him off. "I'm all set, thanks Jack."

"Oh... alright. Well um, maybe tomorrow – if you wanted! – perhaps... we could dine together?"

Hiccup's eyes left the bright goldish mane his brush's bristles were sifting through, settling on Jack. He seemed to ponder for a tight-lipped second, but then he smiled again, with that same odd lack of delight.

"I shan't have the time," he replied quietly, an apology in his lingering eyes before they turned back to the work.

"It wouldn't be any time at all!" Jack protested heartily, provoking a small, but this time true little grin from Hiccup. "I could bring something here! And I won't bother you when you go back to work!"

"And what exactly is it you're doing right now?" the youth pointed out, eyes flickering back to Jack briefly with a good-natured glint.

"Oh come," the young man dismissed, grinning cheekily. "_This_ isn't a bother. This would be gracing you with my company."

Hiccup's brows raised, a soft snort sounding through a smirk. So finally, beneath a sheath of shyness, his strange bedfellow let loose his impish tongue.

"Gracing, or _cursing_?" he quipped teasingly.

"Well that depends on _you_," came the mock-cross reply, an immature pout creasing the young man's pale features. "It isn't _my _fault if you can't recognize the majesty and grace befor—"

Just his luck, it was that moment that Tiana chose to nest down in Jack's hair. Caught-off guard by the itchy tingles the bird's teensy talons sent down his scalp, Jack spluttered and frantically waved her off, stumbling back and nearly dropping his supper. By the time he'd recovered, Hiccup's face was buried in the pony's soft back, shoulders shaking with breathy cackles.

Jack cleared his throat, and straightened.

"...And grace before you," he finished, struggling to maintain a stone-serious face, but it cracked and crumbled at the edges with sheepish jubilance. "Point being – you should dine with me tomorrow."

When Hiccup looked back to his new friend, his grin fell to a hesitant gape. "Jack... I can't," he finally admitted, moving to the pony's other side.

"But why not?" asked Jack childishly.

Again, the horseman hesitated. "I just can't afford it right now," he muttered. "Not too many people here can," added the youth absently.

It began to click in the young man's slow-moving mind. The stares on the streets, the indebted little girl, as well as just how bare the skin was over his loved one's bones, all at once made a sickening sense.

But... hadn't Hiccup given two crowns earlier to the Sheriff?

...Was that all he'd had? And like that, he'd spent them on a stranger's debt? Though the horseman hadn't offered a word to the little girl, what he'd given her was far more than she likely would ever know.

After only long enough to process what Hiccup was saying, Jack reached over the pen gate. "Here."

Hiccup glanced over at the half-eaten bread in Jack's palm. His eyes rolled. "No," he said firmly.

"Take it, I'm set."

"Jack, no," the youth insisted, glaring a little.

The young man shrugged. "Alright, how about I just toss it in Fury's droppings then?"

"Oh for– don't be a pinhead!"

"Then don't be so stubborn!"

Staring down crossly at the offered morsel, Hiccup's resolve began to waver. "Fine," he sighed, taking the food from Jack's hand. Warm, hard fingers brushed the young man's palm. After another brief moment of stewing, the young horseman's obstinate discontent with the gesture seemed to soften as his eyes met Jack's. "...Thank you," he added quietly.

The past spirit of winter mischief grinned softly.

"Got you to dine with me, didn't I?"

* * *

-To be continued...-

* * *

**A/n**: Dooohhhoho Jack's getting cockier. ;P And yes now we have a somewhat over-enthusiastic Toothiana joining us in Baby tooth form. ^^

Bless you reader-person~


	7. Sparks in the Gloom

**A/n**: Um, hi. I may have deleted my tumblr (the hijack one is back up but it won't be super active yet), but I do plan on finishing this fic.

So okay, this is a chapter made of fluff and silliness (if you've seen the Jack Frost cartoon, that's a chief inspiration for this chappy), but it's the beginning of the story's end. Seeeeeee there's kind of a thing in here that I don't think anyone's going to like/get but I'm gonna do it anyway because screw the rules, I have fanfics.

Honestly if anyone's okay with spoilers, I would love to run down the plan for this story with someone, because I could do with input.

Anyhow. This is the last sugarcoated chapter, so enjoy guys!

And thanks so much for reading~

* * *

-Chapter 7: Sparks in the Gloom-

* * *

Each December day tripped by in shorter strides than the last. The air bit down with freezing teeth around mittenless fingers and hatless ears, and night loomed long and bleak. But winter nights were not so unkind to Jack Overland. With the dark and the cold came also the drowsy warmth of a slender body beside his, and the touch – however slight – of one he loved.

Only a few nights had passed since the horseman led the troubadour to his bed of hay. Yet the son of winter was finding each night more restless than the last. He lay listening to his bedfellow's slow, deep breaths, imagining freckly cheeks bunched around a lopsided grin. His mind's eye revisited smile after crooked smile – this one pinched and ironic, that one soft and true – until the sound of his own heartbeat overtook the sleeping sighs in his ears.

Though Jack pestered and teased the bearer of his adoration, always leaning a little closer than was warranted, letting touches last a little longer than they ought, he had yet to make his heart known to the other young man. Hiccup still kept his history buried somewhere within, offering Jack only the smallest passages from that massive piece. Jack only had until spring to convince the horseman to exchange pasts and share a future...

The darkest night of the year fell quietly in Burgess. Jack seemed the only one nearly bursting with delight on the eve of Saint Nicholas' rounds (strange, but jolly old fellow, that one). He'd expected the town's children to be overjoyed on the holiday, but to his surprise, it was the one evening his stories couldn't draw the little ones to the street. A few farthings were his only pay that day, and there was no sign of either Emilia or James and his friends.

Accompanying Hiccup as he walked one of the ponies, Jack finally spied his little friends in the growing dark. They neither played nor spoke. Without a sound, they simply kicked at the snow and glared at nothing.

"What's got everyone so glum?" Jack asked of his friend, sincere confusion cresting his brow. "It's Christmas!"

Hiccup's lips tightened a little. "That's likely why..."

"But what about presents?" the young man burst with the excited inflection of a toddler. "And the songs! And chestnuts!" A slight bounce to his step accented Jack's speech, earning him a warm little chuckle from the horseman. But the deep green eyes lacked a smiling luster.

"Jack... they're not getting any of that."

The brunet's springing stride halted. "But...?" Wasn't St. Nick coming? Surely he wouldn't forget the little town...

"And even if they did, by some good fortune, get _something_, their parents will have to pawn it so they can eat."

"...Then, are you saying," Jack said slowly, a horrible revelation rising from all that he now knew of this poverty-stricken place, "the children have no toys?"

The horseman shifted a shoulder, a bitter twist on his lips. "They're lucky if they're fed."

Without another word, Jack turned on his heel and walked to the cheerless gathering of children. Plopping down on his knees in the snow, he grinned down at James' bleak face.

"Good e'en, James!" he greeted eagerly as ever. "What did Father Christmas bring you?"

Hiccup nearly lost his grip on the pony's reigns. What was that dimwit _doing_? The children's faces darkened even further. Blinking, James bit his lip between gapped teeth.

"He... doesn't come here."

The young man's eyes widened. "Is that so?" his bewildered voice asked. "Well, he's brought _me_ something!"

All eyes turned to the foreigner, some narrow with doubt, some wide with a hopeful sheen, every one of them aglow with a curious glint.

"What did you get?" the little boy asked.

Jack held out his palm, cupped around only air, while his other hand hovered above it as though to steady something he was holding. "This," said the man with a bright smile.

The little ones gathered closer round the story-teller to see what he carried, but none could find a shape between his grasp.

"...What is it?" James wondered with a confused frown.

Jack gave the boy a surprised look. "It's a jar of honey!" he explained, as though it were only obvious. "Have a taste?"

"There's nothing there," one of the girls scoffed tiredly.

"Oh, well, if you're not going to have any, all the more for me," the young man said with a shrug. His upper hand twisted the imaginary lid, plucking up with a show of some difficulty. Flicking his wrist to the side in a tossing motion, he then dipped his forefinger down just over his palm, scooping above it in a jar-like outline. Shaking it a little, as though to disperse a dripping substance from it, Jack brought the finger to his mouth and stuck the tip between his lips. Chestnut eyes went wide, and fluttered shut for an ecstatic second. With an appreciative hum, he popped the digit out from his smiling chops. "Try some!" he chirped, offering his gift to James.

The boy stared, licking his lips thoughtfully, before a little half-grin overtook them, and he reached out with his finger the way Jack had. In the young man's empty palm, the boy began to _see _the glass of thick, syrupy gold surrounding his little knuckle, to _feel_ the heavy slide of it as he pulled it out. Tasting his fingertip, he imagined a sweetness on his tongue beyond any word he yet knew, and the boy giggled lightly at the young man's beaming face.

Jack leaned lower to meet the boy's eyelevel. "What did he bring _you_?" he asked again, and this time James knew how to answer.

With a shy breath, the boy spoke up. "I... I got a book," he said quietly. "With pictures, and – and a gold cover!"

Carefully depositing the honey jar at his side, Jack reached out to James. "Can I see?"

Grinning like his toes weren't freezing and his belly wasn't empty, James handed his pretend present to the young man. When Jack's palms curled around the block of air, his wrists fell slightly with the unseen weight, eyes big and lips round with effort. "It's a fairytale," the boy added.

Tilting his hands and sweeping his thumb, as though flipping through the book's many pages, Jack scrutinized the boy's gift with squinted eyes. As he mimed captivated reading, the gloom slowly began to disperse from over the children's lifting heads.

Another child spoke. "I got a doll," she blurted, calling eager chestnut eyes to her. "She's got yellow hair... and a blue frock!"

The young man carefully closed James' book and returned it to the boy, asking of the girl, "What's her name?"

Tucking her gloved hands close to her chest, cradling air, the girl answered, "Sophie."

That was when the final thread broke between the little lads and lasses and their uninspired reserve.

"I got a sled!"

"I got cake!"

"I got a pony!"

"I got a ball!"

Jack stood. "Give it here!" he called, backing up.

An animated ball game ensued, bodies tilting, diving, just barely catching and straining to reach for something only they could see.

From beneath the Over Land Inn's flapping sign, the horseman stood still and silent, round eyes captive to the extraordinary scene. Winter after winter, Hiccup had surrendered more meals and coins than he ever would own to, in favor of tending to those younger and needier than he. What he gave was bound in cool sense, a basic kindness to the body.

What Jack gave tended to the heart, bound in guileless passion.

One of the little boys, a free moor*, spotted the horseman's rapt stare. When the invisible ball was passed to him, he swung back his skinny arm and flung it in Hiccup's direction.

"You dropped it!" the child accused when the horseman man no move to catch his throw.

Hiccup blinked at him. "Ah – oh," he mumbled, shifting awkwardly. After a deliberating moment, he stooped hesitantly and reached down by his boot, straightening with cupped hands. Every pair of eyes drew to his still, unsure form.

The biggest child pointed. "Get him!" she hollered, and led a charge against the youth unintentionally hogging the ball. Hiccup could only take a few panicked steps back before they attacked, cornering him against the inn wall. As they clambered to reach his hands, he opened them defensively, wincing at the riot around his waist.

"O-okay, that's – that's quite – quite enough I think!"

Much to the besieged horseman's good fortune, James exclaimed, "It rolled over there!" and the children scrambled in the direction to which he pointed. But as they pushed past him, someone kneed the metal prosthetic where it joined his shin. The leg extension scraped slightly off-kilter, and stripped the youth of his balance. With a startled wince, Hiccup splayed back against the inn.

Not an instant passed before there was a grasp on his shoulder and another's breath near his tense face. "Hiccup? Are you alright?" asked Jack's low voice.

"A-aye," replied the horseman a bit raspily. "Just need to reset this..."

As he slid straighter up along the wall, and reached to adjust his prosthetic, Jack's other hand pressed lightly against the youth's torso to keep him balanced. Hiccup paused, a pair of guarded eyes fixing on Jack for a beat, before he turned back to his artificial limb. When it was slid carefully back into place, and tightened, the youth returned his eyes to Jack – only to find his doting chestnut gaze all too close.

A wordless few moments passed.

"Are you going to kiss?"

Both young men jolted their focus to the little crowd of children now watching them curiously. The girl who'd spoken pointed up at the sign above their heads, where there dangled a sprig of mistletoe.

"They can't kiss," another child asserted. "Boys don't kiss boys."

Jack lifted a cheeky brow. "Who says?" asked he with a playful lilt.

"Daddy said," she replied, while others nodded, recalling their Bible, and how their parents translated the passages for a child's simple comprehension – this is good, that is bad.

The young man only rolled his eyes. "What does _he _know? He's an _adult_." Jack's voice dripped with disdain for the word.

"But... so are you," one of the boys pointed out.

At that, Jack sent a teasing glare at the child, pointing threateningly. "You take that back!" he insisted, releasing Hiccup to give chase after the boy.

Hiccup didn't move from the wall when Jack left, only staring after him blankly, fingers slowly kneading into his palms.

That night, before dousing the light, Hiccup mentioned his birth village. Jack was remarking on one of the little girl's odd name, Cake, when the horseman's lips suddenly shaped a reflective curve.

"I've heard stranger," he commented. "I knew someone called Fishlegs – oh, it was only a nickname, bit cruel one really. But when we were small he seemed to like it better than Gaheris." In the flickering lamplight, Hiccup withdrew his arms from the dark-furred vest he always wore. Jack's eyes followed the slim, shadow-lined limbs.

"Wasn't as mean a name as Snotlout. Gawain _hated_ when I called him that." The youth chuckled a little, working at his prosthetic and worn boot with nostalgic eyes. "Even my father was known by an odd name. The villagers called him Stoic... 'course when he was knighted it was his Christian name they sang of..."

Jack stared at the faint, yellowish colors washing over freckles from the little encased flame. "...What's your name?"

The disrobing horseman halted. His face turned silently to Jack, rigid with wariness.

"Well, it wasn't always Hiccup, was it?"

Sucking in his spotted cheeks, the youth's suspicion gave way a little when their eyes met. "If I tell you," he said, very quietly, "do you promise never to repeat it?"

The other young man frowned, confused by all the fuss over a name. "Alright..."

"...It's Galahad."

* * *

-To be continued-

* * *

**A/n**: I can see you scratching your heads so lemme just try and give you _some _idea as to what the flying monkey balls I'm doing.

Yes, it's a tie-in to Arthurian legend, and not the last, but this isn't going to follow it directly or anything. Actually it's kind of like an AU within an AU? _ IDEK.

So, if you're not all over this chappy's literary allusion, here's a quick run-down: Gaheris, Gawain and Galahad were knights of the round table. Gawain was a rowdy, unwise, but bold knight, Gaheris his calmer brother. Galahad was the illegitimate son of undefeated Lancelot, prophesied to surpass his father and find the sangreal (the holy grail), as he was purest of the knights.

So uh, this story interprets _purity_ in a veeerrrryyy liberal manner... and uh takes the whole grail thing to a super metaphorical level. ._.

I dunno I guess I thought it would be interesting to have an interpretation of Galahad where he _isn't _the golden-child of _everything - o_nly where it _counts_. And Hiccup as _that _Galahad just made me happy so I put it.

_ANYWHO_.

Thanks for sticking it out mes amis~

*_Moor _is basically an archaic term for a person of color.


	8. The Golden Knight

**A/n**: Da-da-daaaa we're back. ^^ I apologize for Aster's dialogue I've basically completely given up trying to Aussiefy him.

Okay there's a new appearance in this chapter, and I will tell you this much, it's _not _an OC. You'll probably recognize them, they're just gonna be a teeeeensy bit different... all will be revealed in due course. :D

* * *

-The Golden Knight-

* * *

Hope budded fiercely in Jack's gut. The stable boy paid him coy heed when they bantered and laughed, and he no longer tensed when touches stretched too long. He'd told him his name, the names of childhood friends and the rivers in his village.

Jack was getting closer to opening the other boy's heart.

But Hope, Jack had yet to learn, wears only the _guise_ of might and ferocity. In truth, Hope is a tiny, delicate thing that so easily snaps...

The lesson was taught on a pretty morn nearly a week past Christmas. Jack spent all the days following the holiday practicing love declarations to Hiccup, adjudicated by an elated Tiana and a disgusted Aster. Fury even seemed to snort out his own amused remarks at the young man's anxious endeavors, watching him pace and wring his hair and groan at himself.

"Jack," the spring sprite sighed into his paw, gray ears drooping until the tips nearly swept the snowy ground. "I swore to yer father you would not be led astray under my watch. I've never broken an oath, so you listen well – do _not _try to confess your feelings in _rhyme_..."

"I think it's sweet!" Tiana chirped overhead, flapping away excitedly. "Though... perhaps there's another rhyme for 'freckles' than 'heckles'..."

With a bitter grunt, the young man collapsed face first against the wall of a tavern. "It's no use, is it?" he complained into the harsh wood. "How do I tellhim..."

The boy in question emerged from out of the huddling sea of townsfolk, hauling a bag of oats on his shoulder. Lush green eyes blinked at the lamenting brunet, slim lips and auburn brows forming bemused little half-arcs.

"Jack, what are you doing?"

Looking up with a start, the brown-eyed young man stared at Hiccup like a doe peers into an archer's poised arrow. "Ha, nothing!" he half-yelped, leaping away from the wall like its touch stung, and Jack grinned the grin of a child caught eating the last slice of pie. "Just, um, thinking, aha... ha."

Hiccup's eyes rolled up and he shook his head, throwing the oat sack over Fury's back and securing it on his saddle. "Well, mind you don't strain your head," he advised around a chuckle.

The young man glared, nervous tension ceding to playful indignation. "Mind you don't get _yours _clocked!" he warned, softening the threat with a grin.

As the cheeky horseman started to retort, a child's voice shouted over the street clatter.

"A knight!" it called. "There's a knight come to Burgess!"

The stable boy's glowing face fell. Stern, wary strides took him out of the little alley with Jack and the animals, an unsure glance sweeping in the direction of the child's voice.

People murmured, young ones running around the grownups to glimpse the armor-decked servant of the King. The first child leapt out to meet with her curious peers, eyes and lips wide. "His armor is golden! A golden knight!"

Jack stepped beside his friend and followed his frozen stare at the street's end. Over the many hooded and capped heads, a glint of metal caught the sun. There, upon a tall, dapple-gray steed, was the heralded knight, his identity shrouded under the visor of his helmet. Just as the child said, the metal shimmered like gold in the daylight.

The one-legged horseman's eyes grew round, and the taut unease of his entire body lifted with the edges of his open mouth. Before Jack could ask what he was about, Hiccup left his side and bolted for the approaching stranger like one of the little ones, fast as the peg leg and the crowd would allow.

Stumbling after, Jack tried to call Hiccup's attention, asking what the blazes was going on, but the youth gave no reply. When the horseman skidded to a breathless stop before the regal mare, the stranger dismounted and tore off his helmet.

Yellow hair fell around the gentle curves of a rosy face, down to the metal-padded shoulders. Thick lashes winked away straying blond strands from a pair of sharp eyes, bluer than a fair summer sky. Combing back the loose curls with armor-plated knuckles, the knight's red, red lips parted in an earnest grin.

He was the handsomest youth Jack had ever seen.

And in the next moment, he had Jack's auburn-haired beloved in a fierce embrace.

The stranger stood at about the same height as Hiccup, but thicker –at least, the armor gave that appearance. He laughed, a bright tenor sound, and when he let Hiccup go, he jabbed good-naturedly at the other youth's skinny arm. The gesture wavered the horseman's balance, but Hiccup only rubbed at the spot on his arm with a vivid grin and a gasping chuckle.

They started to speak at the same time, both then stopping to hear the other, and more laughter burst between them.

The gathered folks began to disperse after getting a good look in at the fair knight, satisfied with staring from afar as they completed their chores. Under the comparative privacy, the youths talked.

"What are – why – why are you here?" Hiccup spurted, voice jittery with more excitement than Jack had ever witnessed in the stable boy before now.

"Well, I got word of a peg-legged boy with a black horse telling off the sheriff of Burgess," the fair youth aimed a pointed look at Hiccup, who glanced away with a sheepish smile. The knight gave a snarky cackle, and continued, "and because it _is _my God-sworn duty to defend helpless virgins, thought I'd come see that your bony arse is still in one piece."

"Yes, well, that's," the stable boy was shaking his head, trying to keep a deadpan face, but airy giggles were escaping his pretense. "Noble, very noble of you. I can see you take your pledge to heart."

Fury clopped over to the yellow-haired soldier, nearly knocking Jack's still, quiet form out of his way. The stallion neighed for attention, nuzzling the knight's arm. "And hello to _you_, Fury," the stranger cooed, petting the beast as though it were a small mongrel. Hiccup at last broke away from the knight's side to dig his hand into the bag of oats on Fury's saddle. Holding out a heaping handful to the gray mare, the stable boy grinned and greeted the hungry horse as "Storm."

"I'm _famished_," the stranger commented suddenly. "Come, breakfast's on me."

He started dragging the other boy towards the nearest tavern, but Hiccup's laughing eyes finally found Jack's empty stare.

"Just—steady on," the stable boy chuckled, trying (vainly) to pull free. "Ah, this is Jack." The horseman inclined his head to the young man the stranger had yet to acknowledge.

Blue eyes batted for a blank beat. "Ah– oh!" the knight said with surprise. Then his armor-clad bearing adopted a more gentlemanly air for the introduction. "Good den," he greeted with a little smirk.

"...Good den," returned Jack, tight lips forming what could almost pass for a smile.

A small frown dimmed Hiccup's cheery face. "Um, Jack, this is—"

"Tristan," the knight cut in, extending his armored hand. Hiccup blinked, but he made no complaint.

"He's, uh, we've known each other a long time," the freckly youth explained vaguely, while Tristan gripped so firmly at Jack's reluctantly offered hand, the young man actually stumbled forward a little.

"Owes me everything but the left leg," the knight added, clapping his hand heartily over the other youth's shoulder. "Only part of you that got away – but everything else, I took good watch over. Seen a lot of close shaves on the fields, but none so close as this one got into."

And Jack suddenly saw where Tristan pieced into Hiccup's tale – he was the foot soldier. That boy Hiccup mentioned so oft to the horses in the refuge of supposed solitude, the one who kept him alive in the battles that left their mark on a crippled youth. Here was he, the one friend he'd ever spoken of, now no longer a lowly soldier, but a knighted champion of the kingdom.

In sweeps the past to overshadow the present...

Jack declined a polite offer to dine with them. He didn't think his belly could carry a meal over the anxious tides it rode. Wandering back to the stables, the young man began to entertain an idea he had not yet allowed himself to think on.

What if he lost this wager?

Tiana flitted beside his downturned face, purple eyes strewn with concern. "W-well!" she cheeped. "A knight, that's – how interesting!"

Jack kicked silently at the snow, his lips still resolutely thin, as though they'd forgotten the path to a smile.

Down below, Aster's hopping trail after the human paused, and he stared thoughtfully at the scattering of white around Jack's boot-print. "...Probably a ninny," he muttered finally, scurrying to keep apace with the young man.

The little bird flew around to Jack's other side, so that the animals were flanking his slightly hunched figure. "He – he did seem a bit boastful, didn't he?"

"Probably spends half the day fixin' up those locks," the hare added.

"And why _gold _armor?" questioned the bird. "I don't suppose the usual grays and blacks are good enough, is that it?"

"Like as not, he's just a twat with a pretty face."

"And a title – but, but he probably isn't even very brave!"

The young man rolled his chestnut eyes, lips quirking a little despite his gloom as they reached the stable doors. Once inside, the sprites glanced at each other, then at their inconsolably glum kinsman. He just sat in the hay against the wall, pensive eyes seeing far outside his surroundings, all the way to a tavern where a beautiful knight dined with the one he'd only come to love more with every day.

Tiana settled on his shoulder.

"...I'm sure he's only a friend, Jack," she whispered.

Jack's throat clenched, as though under the hold of an invisible grip. It made speaking impossible without – without... he didn't know what. Something, it seemed, was stretched so taut, it could rip apart at any moment. Perhaps it was the very seaming to his center.

Whatever it was, it pricked his eyes and stole his breath. For a panicked moment, he wondered if this fragile human body wouldn't shatter under this incredible weight in his chest. The pressure spread through him, burning the young man up from the inside, until his eyes stung so horribly that he squeezed them shut. From their moist cusps, hot droplets trickled down the slope of his cheeks. He choked, though all that could be lodged in his throat were the pieces of a breaking heart.

Hope lay in its mortal wounds where only that morning it had danced – but it was not yet gone. And if even a shred of it remained, Jack Frost was sure to walk with it unto its end...

Though it seemed so long before he could stop his own tears, he did at last find the will to stand again, and the reason to smile again. The day was early yet, and there were other hearts hungrier even than his lovesick one.

Emilia hadn't attended many of Jack's stories. She was needed at home more oft than not, standing in the stead of a father and a brother. Jack found her hauling buckets from the town well, face puffed and teeth gritting under the icy water's weight. Sneaking up behind her, the young man startled her with a sudden greeting – she would have overturned the buckets had he not steadied them with his own grip.

"Jack!" she cried happily, tired eyes now bright, but she didn't smile long. "I haven't the time to play, Jack," lamented the girl.

"This isn't play?" the young man asked in that bewildered voice that always met with childish laughs and grins.

"Nay," giggled she. "'Tis chores, silly!"

"Well, if you haven't the time for play, I shall have to take the time for chores! What are the rules?"

Crossing her arms in all her gap-toothed authority, Emilia tutted. "It's not a game, Jack," she insisted. "Just bringing the water home."

"Alright, then what?"

"Then the floor needs swept... and my frock needs mending..."

A whole list of what must be done followed, one she very doubtfully could complete on her own in one night – if any number of nights. Yet she seemed determined it should be so, and it gave the man a series of activities to pile over his ill-faring soul.

"Where's your friend?" came the question that nearly knocked Jack's show of guileless cheer right off, and revealed the disorder beneath it.

"Ah, elsewhere... do you know why ice breaks?"

The question succeeded in redirecting the girl's interest. "It's when it's warm, isn't it?"

"Nay!" Jack laughed, as though the answer were absurd. "Nay, it's when Father Winter hasn't the breath to blow over the earth any longer."

"...Which leaves the earth to warm and the ice to crack, yes?" Emilia persisted stubbornly, scratching behind the ears of a begrudgingly pleased-looking gray hare.

"Well, the land isn't warm of its own doing!" explained the elder of the two knowledgably. "That's for its mother and her sprites to do."

With a curious frown, Emilia straightened and ran to catch up with Jack's patient strides. "It has a mother?"

"Aye, all things have a mother!" The young man had the pails balanced on either ends of a crook set across his shoulders, keeping him from stooping towards the girl, but he eyed her still with all his usual spark. "Mother Earth is like our mother too... she makes our home and feeds us from her own milk."

Emilia's face scrunched. "Blech..."

Laughing heartily, Jack nodded. "Aye, well, we're all still babes really."

"Nay, I'm seven and-a-quarter!"

"Ah, I beg your pardon then! All of us but _you_, Lady Emilia," he amended.

He was starting to tell her a story he'd never before thought to share, because it had never before struck his childlike disposition with any weight. Now, as a tale of mortals came back to one who once walked within the ranks of gods, for the first time, the words carried a kind of credence.

It told of Earth and Time, reaper and sower of an unending cycle. Life and Death alike take equal part in that edgeless ring, instruments to the creators of all things. The tiny creatures of Mother Earth's gardens, who wander Life and flee from Death, cannot see as far as the gods see. They look for purpose in their little valleys and meager hills, but always, they fear Death, and with it Pain, Loneliness and Sorrow.

But in an ending comes always a beginning, and in a beginning always an end. Life and Death hold no distinction to Earth and Time, nor do all the little pangs of Life appear more than tiny bumps in Time's fabric. Whether you laugh or you cry, all things cycle on, without so much as a ripple.

So _laugh_, always choose laughter over tears, with what time you're given in the body you now wear, and fear not the little folds in the path...

Emilia's mother returned from her barmaid duties with scraps for supper, before the sun sank too low in the sky. She was the sort of lady who made an exquisite maiden once, but grief and hunger brought age and fatigue to her soft complexion. What little she could offer, she let Jack dine on for his help, with both the keeping of the house's order and the keeping of her daughter's spirits.

Hiccup was in the stables already by the time Jack returned, according to the little light in the alcove. Girding himself before facing the other youth, Jack crept up the ladder slowly, quietly drawing out his solitude. At the top he started to clamber up without a thought – but it wasn't Hiccup in the nook.

Blue eyes gaped at him, huge and stricken, slender arms frozen in the middle of – of...

Jack could only blink. He was barely off the ladder, face-to-face with Tristan, who was stripped of all armor and shirtless. All that covered the knight's torso was a band of cloth, wound tight around a slender, sinewy shape... with a feminine curve at the chest.

The stunned silence didn't last. Tristan was the first to recover, features darkening to a ferocious scowl as the knight kicked at the ladder. As it tilted back, the young man leapt off into the relative safety of the haystacks, while the ladder clattered against the ground and startled the horses into an array of unsettled whines and snorts.

Tristan leapt down, bearing kept under deft, sure footing, a white tunic thrown on over the bound chest and sword in hand. "You will take it to your grave," the yellow-haired youth hissed. "Do you understand, you meddling cretin!"

Jack backed away from the steel edge aimed at his throat, hands raised. "Alright! Alright, I shan't tell! Only... why—"

"God help me, I _will_ run you through if you breathe another _word_ about-!"

"What is going _on_?" Hiccup's voice called over Tristan's.

The horseman rushed in past the heavy doors to investigate the ruckus, glaring at Tristan. "What are you—" then his eyes fell on the partly open tunic, and what lay beneath, and the stable boy sighed heavily. "_Jack_," he groaned into his palm. "Okay, Astrid, calm down. He can be trusted."

"How can you know that?" the knight –Astrid?– barked, refusing to lift her weapon. "You've known him all of a fortnight!"

"...Um," Jack piped up from beneath the sword's point. "But why... why must it be a secret?"

The woman laughed scornfully. "Oh, is it so? You can think of _no _reason why a soldier must not be found out to be a _woman_?"

Wetting his lips in thought, Jack tried to imagine the reason. But his eyes just turned up with sincere blankness. "...No?" he tried quietly, wincing at his still limited understanding of man's odd ways.

Astrid paused, staring thoughtfully for a second before finally drawing back. "Is he a half-wit?" she asked quietly of Hiccup.

"I'm... _reasonably _sure he is not," the horseman said dryly over Jack's indignant response. "He's just not from here."

"Then where _is _he from?" wondered the blonde knight. "The _moon_?"

"The clouds actually..." Jack supplied under his breath, drawing eye-rolls from all angles.

"Just, no more swords for one night please, Astrid..."

* * *

-To be continued...-

* * *

**A/n**: WELP. Tristan can almost be an anagram for Astrid... except it'd have to be Tristad... ech. xD But so yes the plan was to bring her in and have all that drama lol. I thought about having her not _just _dress up and present as a man to get by in an extremely sexist world, but also having Astrid identify as male on a personal level. Buuut I just wanted to keep simple. Right now if anything I guess she's gender queer. ^^ Enjoys presenting as either.

Astrid identifying as a woman doesn't change the jealousy factor for Jack, but it was sure a distraction from it for a second there lol.

Also sorry about all the life and death stuff I was feelin' it last night so it came pooping out. ._.

AND if I don't respond to your reviews it is because I suck but I promise I read and love them all and they make me so happy. Just warning you I will probably fail to respond since my social awkwardness extends to online interaction.


	9. The Traitor and The Dagger

**A/n**: There have been some really lovely reviews and it just really touches me that people are still reading and liking it and it makes me want to smoosh your faces. Thank you.

And sorry for the wait, but we're bearing down at this point. When I'm done I might re-edit this so it flows a little more coherently...

This chapter is kinda random so well strap in eheheheheheh. Also hello page breaks! Long time no see.

* * *

-Chapter 9: The Traitor and The Dagger-

* * *

Astrid took up lodging at the inn that night, though Hiccup had offered to make her a separate bed of hay. The knight just trained an unsubtle glower on Jack, and stiffly declined the offer. But Storm was left to the horseman's care, who brushed down her journey-beaten coat with smooth, sure strokes.

Jack watched him work on the mare from atop the gate to Fury's pen. The stallion's snout nudged under the storyteller's elbow until the young man's fingers rose to ruffle his mane. But his chestnut eyes never strayed long from the stable boy, following the stretches of his bony limbs as he reached out, tracing over the bend in his back as he leaned, lingering on the pink tongue caught between his lips as Hiccup frowned over a snag in the pale mane.

As his stubby nails wove slowly through Fury's thick black hair, Jack sucked in his own lips, and let out a heavy breath from his nostrils. Upon her usual perch on the young man's shoulder, Tiana had tucked her head into a shroud of vibrant wings, and now dozed soundly on a pillow of her own feathers. Aster could barely keep his eyes pried open himself, curled up on Jack's knee. Every time the young man budged, rabbit ears pricked and the sprite grumbled drowsily, while Tiana tittered slightly in her sleep. Still, they dared not leave his side, not since the human woman drew her sword on him.

The hour was late, yet Hiccup still toiled after his friend's steed, even replacing her shoes with a brand new set. It was extra work, but he did it without complaint. Hiccup was very dedicated to the gold-clad knight...

When wandering green glimpsed the blue of the young man's absent gaze, Jack was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't look away. The horseman blinked rapidly, brushing somewhat damp bangs from his brow, and smiled a little. "Tired?" he asked.

Jack untangled himself from his whirring mind, and chuckled sheepishly, quickly averting his stare. "Nay. Only... stuck," he explained in a hushed tone, glancing at the half-asleep hare in his lap, and the snoring fowl on his shoulder. Fury quietly huffed out a snort, reminding the brunet to resume his petting.

The horseman's little smile spread to a warm grin, biting his lower lip as he caught sight of the sleepy creatures, no more than tiny balls of fluff and feathers. With a low giggle, Hiccup led Storm into an empty pen. "One of the mares had a foal last spring. Used to run around in circles until it got so tired, it stumbled over and collapsed its head right on my knee. Kept me from getting anything done, little terror of a horse."

Glancing around at all the four-legged creatures around them, most nodding off while still upright, Jack wondered aloud what happened to the foal.

Hiccup was quiet as he closed the gate to Storm's stall. Then he turned and lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug, smile fading. "His owner sold him. Someone from another town." Noticing Jack's dismay, the stable boy recovered his warm expression, though it was a little wry. "They're not mine to keep, you know. Well, none but this old wastrel here," he added as he approached Fury, scrubbing affectionately at the stallion's neck.

"You're the one who looks after them, though," Jack grumbled, frowning at the hay-strewn floor. The horseman treated each of his equestrian charges like a friend, cooing and patting at them as he made sure they had enough to eat and drink, tended to their coats and their shoes, and jotted any irregular behavior down in a journal until he discovered a way to settle the problem. Yet for all his care, any one of them could be plucked away, at the whim of someone who spent an hour with his horse for every day Hiccup gave it.

The youth didn't reply. He only leaned his elbows against Fury's pen, not far from Jack's thigh. "Astrid wants to race in the morn," he finally said, to Fury more so than to Jack. "Should get some sleep, huh chum?"

Under the dulling spell of fatigue, Jack neglected to hide his slight groan. Hiccup glanced at him, chewing his cheek a moment. "I'm sorry she threatened you. She's not one who trusts easily... and I'm afraid you caught her at her most vulnerable. Not something she very much cares to be."

Jack hummed in understanding, but his brow pinched. "I still don't... why doesn't she want anyone to know?"

The stable boy looked at him like he'd just asked after the color of the sky, something so plain to him yet strange to actually explain. After a long beat, he tilted his head. "Well, it's against the law, for one."

"It is?"

"Aye... if she gets caught soldiering and a woman, she could get locked up. If not hanged."

This startled the young man enough to rouse the creatures resting on his person. "What! Why?"

"Because... it's complicated, Jack," the youth sighed, feeling as though he were talking to a child. "I suppose... people are used to their own way of life, yes? And when someone tries to live someway different, it frightens people."

"But..." Jack blinked disbelievingly. Did fear really command so many human hearts? He remembered the Bogeyman and his black nightmares, the spirit he'd once laughed at and played tricks on. Now it seemed a sinister kind of burn had always dwelled in the dark being's gold eyes, though Jack had never before recognized it. "But _hanging..._?"

Bloodshed and death never drew the winter sprite's gaze in his three centuries of guileless fun, but in his peripherals, they were always there, uncanny and incomprehensible corners of the world. Swaying bodies under a branch was a vague image that only now began to sharpen.

"We punish the strange," Hiccup remarked lightly, reaching for his dark companion's thick neck. As his palm stroked down the stallion's smooth hide, his eyes seemed to stray past the little stall to somewhere distant. "We're made to, I suppose..."

Jack fidgeted. "I don't understand," he whispered hopelessly. Why were humans such labyrinthine creatures?

The youth's eyes flickered to Jack, and very softly, a smile perked one corner of his lips.

"Let's hope you never do."

* * *

The morning struck with a chaos none could forecast.

Jack woke to voices, leaping and sharp with urgency. Beside him, he felt limbs shuffle, and Hiccup's breath leaving him fast and hard.

"They must have followed me," the words formed out of the sleep-ridden stupor. "_Damn_."

"How many?" Hiccup's voice demanded.

"Dozens at least," Astrid's answered, above scuffling footsteps. "Hiccup... Mordred's among them."

Rising slowly, Jack peered drowsily around the dawn-lit alcove, slipping out of the bed of hay. When he climbed to the ground, he found the stable boy's face in front of his wearing a hard, fright-tinged stare.

"You have to go," he ordered, turning away from him with a saddle in hand. He spoke on as he fixed it to Fury's back in deft, hurried motions. "Go to the Inn or one of the shops, don't come out until the King's men are gone."

Chestnut eyes fell under brief shroud of blinking lids. "What?" asked Jack with a morning-dry throat.

The horseman whipped around and grabbed Jack's forearm. "_Now_," he said with such finality that the other man nearly flinched, and Hiccup hauled him by the arm towards the doorway.

"But –"

Astrid took over for Hiccup, snatching up Jack's shirt collar and dragging him off while the stable boy mounted Fury. "Questions later," she growled, throwing open the doors and flinging the young man out into the cold.

Brown brows knitting with utter confusion, and rising anger, Jack stumbled for bearings, and turned back to the rough knight. But a noise called his attention to the street.

Clicking and clanking metal hailed their coming. An entire battalion of soldiers strode over the cobblestone in their armor and shields, swords at their sides and arrows strapped to their backs. At their head, a man on a pure white horse rode in, helmet clinging around a scarred, yet youthful face.

The men wore the King's insignia – a red dragon.

Jack's feet backed instinctively from the soldier-filled path. Unlike the golden knight's arrival, this gathering of metal-clad fighters cleared the center of the streets of all citizens, who only looked on from windows and huddled against walls. A name passed from the many whispering lips.

Mordred, the Dagger.

The young leader of the company stilled while his soldiers ran about him, bursting into homes and shops. He looked around to all the civilians, raising his arm like a God preparing to lower judgment upon the mortals.

"People of Burgess," he cried in a full, clear voice. "You harbor a traitor to our King!"

Soldiers wove in and out of the buildings, leaving overturned tables and emptied sacks of rations in their wake. Children's voices were among the shouting.

"Surrender the treasoner to us, and your village shall be pardoned."

Little James ran wild-eyed into the street. His friends were scattered among the growing mayhem. Jack called to him, rushing to gather him up and out of the way of the rampant raiders.

"Keep him from us, and every house will burn!"

The little boy balanced in one arm, Jack sought out the other children from the crowding streets, pulling them to him and drawing back into the alleys.

"He is Galahad, son of Lancelot. Traitor to the King!"

Jack's thudding pulse stopped.

Little fingers were closed tight over his cloak. Setting James down, the man stooped to stare at every frightened eye around him. "Stay here," he said, hands on the littlest child's shoulder.

The children's voices rose in protest. "Don't go," James beseeched with trembling lips. "I-I'm scared..."

"You're going to be fine," Jack assured him with a confidence he himself didn't believe. "Stay together and stay out of the street. I'll be back."

He rose without another word, doubling back to the stables. Before he could reach them, a black figure galloped out from the wide open doors.

From Fury's back, Hiccup leveled a steady glare at the man on the white horse.

"Long time, Mordred," he commented, loud enough to get the man's attention.

The man unsheathed his sword, pointing its gleaming edge at the boy. "Here!" he called to his men. "The traitor is here!"

Wasting no more breath, Mordred kicked his steed and charged. Fury and Hiccup tore off in the other direction, the man and his mounted soldiers giving chase.

Astrid swooped out on Storm, blocking the bulk of the men from returning to their steeds. She leapt down into the throng of six or seven, lashing her sword with a cry.

After her, the little sprites sprung out from the stables, groggy from just awakening. Honing in on Jack, Aster asked what the devil was happening.

"I don't know," he replied breathlessly. Items of all kinds had been thrown in the pathways, clothes, sacks, boxes and mops, tripping up his startled steps.

A great scream turned him back to Astrid. Half of the men were down. The woman was clutching her side, where the armor had a gap. She threw herself at the remaining soldiers, ducking and kicking them down, smacking the blunt end of her weapon into them. But she began to waver, and a blow fell against her fighting arm.

The golden knight dropped, outnumbered, and the last two soldiers lifted their swords for the kill.

A fluttering of colors filled one man's sight, startling him back from his victim. Tiana's little beak pricked at the soldier's bulbous nose, flitting too quickly for him to swat before his exposed face. The other soldier's armor creaked with little climbing steps, and rabbit teeth suddenly bit into his ear.

The men stumbled under the tiny animals' attacks, until finally Tiana was slapped to the side, and Aster thrown off by the nape of his furry neck. Nothing to hinder them now, they bore down on the bleeding knight.

Jack's fingers curled around an old walking staff lying among the obstacles in the street. He crept slowly after the soldiers, lower-lip caught under an anxious bite. Taking a sharp breath, he swung back, and rammed the staff into a helmetless head.

One soldier toppled down. The other swiveled around, only for Astrid's armor-plated boot to knock into his calf. He collapsed back towards her, and the lady punched his lights right out.

The young man instantly fell to the woman's side. "Are you—"

"_Fine_," she answered scarcely before he could ask. "Just – have to..." She tried to stand. The knight fell back with a ragged yelp.

Carefully helping her to her feet, Jack half-carried Astrid to the Inn, the closest shelter. As he walked her, his dark eyes turned to the little bird by his side, only a little ruffled from the fight. "Hiccup," he huffed. "He went – they were – can you find him?"

The summer sprite's eyes narrowed with duty, and with a curt nod, Tiana sped through the sky, up above the highest roofs and tallest trees.

Summoning her magic from its sleep, the sprite shed her mortal form, feathery colors unfurling into a small, human-like shape. Now unhindered by the guise, she flew faster than wind, and saw farther than eagles.

It took moments to hone her all-seeing gaze on the black stallion and its pursuers.

They were riding through the forest, hot on the one-legged youth's trail. Arrows flew at him, but none found a target on the horseman or his dark steed. Fury was faster than the other horses, but under the attack, the boy led his stallion in a tarrying serpentine path, while the soldiers flew straight ahead at them.

The white one carrying Mordred drove ahead of the others. Mordred unslung a crossbow from his back, and fixed his aim.

His arrow flew out with a violent snap of the crossbow, and a cry lifted to the forest ceiling.

Hiccup's shoulder was struck.

Tiana followed as the man loaded another arrow. It missed.

The stable boy was doubled over against Fury, gritting his teeth and straining to keep streaming eyes open.

Another arrow. It ran into Hiccup's side, and the boy on the horse fell limp.

In her immortal incarnation, the sprite dared not interfere – the nature gods heavily frowned upon meddling in the life or death of a mortal. But it was seldom much of a concern, since most sprites never really felt call either to rescue or destroy the silly little humans.

But as the body on Fury's back began to slip, until it dropped from the stallion's saddle into the snow, Tiana fought to keep her power within her fingertips, and not let it reach out to the kind stable boy who'd once cradled her little mortal shell like a gem.

All she could do as the soldiers gathered their catch was follow.

* * *

It was growing dark before Tiana returned. The town had settled since the morning's mayhem, children stowed safely away in their homes, and households slowly reordering themselves.

Astrid had tended to her own wounds, refusing any meddlesome midwife's aid, and having Jack guard her door while she tightened bandages over gaping flesh. She wouldn't allow him back in her room until her makeshift patchwork was done.

The little bird swept in with an outgoing patron, diving towards Jack's hopeful countenance.

"Did you find him?" he whispered.

She nodded solemnly. "They... those men have him."

Jack's hope collapsed.

"I saw where they've taken him, but it's almost a day's ride from here."

The sprite worried that tears were again about to erupt from his mortal eyes, the way his face quivered. But the wavering contours hardened with sudden intensity, and the young man turned without another word, barging into Astrid's room.

Blue eyes glanced up at him. Though she looked none too pleased, Astrid didn't protest too sharply against her last ally.

"He's been caught."

The woman sat up as much as she could against the meager frame of her cot. "What?"

"Mordred has Hiccup. Astrid," he rounded on the knight, closing the space between him and her cot. "What's going on?"

"How do you know they've got him?"

"A birdie told me. Now are you going to explain any of this to me or not?"

Her pensive gaze fell. "It isn't for me to say..."

"Astrid!" Jack snapped. He only barely bit back a screaming outpour of everything careening through his head – how the youth he gave away eternity for, the boy he would rather share a single lifetime with than countless eons without, was caught in the web of some armor-clad spider he'd not even known was lurking over them.

The young man tried to just breath, but even the fundamentals of life taxed him. His red-faced worry finally subsided enough to speak again without quaking. "What will they do to him?"

A silence passed.

"The price for treason is your life."

Suddenly the room was so cold.

"What – what _treason_?" asked the befuddled man, almost scoffing at the very idea.

The knight sighed. "There is no one else but _you_, now," she conceded, albeit with less than impressed emphasis. "I suppose you have a right to know..."

* * *

-To be continued.-

* * *

**A/n**: Le gasp! Ö

Well then. I don't know how many have seen the Jack Frost cartoon from way back, but yeah I'm still more or less following that plotline. Ergo kidnapping. Or well arresting... yeah I changed that a lot lol.

It would have been hilarious though if it went the way it did in the cartoon. Hiccup just strolling around and Dagur (yes Mordered is Dagur because Dagger is a homonym haha yeah ok) bein' like yoooooo ur hawt ima kidnap u now. xD Omg maybe _that's _how it shoulda gone down.

So yes thank you for reading, the next chapter shouldn't take as long a wait since I already started it, _but _there will be a heaping ton of exposition so it'll probably be really boring. D: But it's almost done! The next few chapters might be a little long, but if I kinda jam it all together it should only take maybe as little as three more chapters to go. ^_^

Later lovelies!


End file.
